HELSINKI.- Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art presents Kim Levin: Notes and Itineraries 1975–2004, on view through February 1, 2009. Kim Levin: Notes and Itineraries 1975–2004 presents a unique look into the exhibition history of one of the world’s major centres of contemporary art. In her notes that span a period of more than three decades, art critic Kim Levin has documented the development of the art scene in her native New York as well as the changing priorities of contemporary art. The exhibition will be on show in the Kontti Gallery in Kiasma. The installation also serves as a background for the Full House exhibition, which is scheduled to open at the same time.

Kim Levin has been making notes about her visits to exhibitions for decades. She prepares exact route plans for her weekly rounds of galleries and museums, and has been saving invitations since 1975. Artist John Salvest found these ”obsessive and systematic” documents fascinating, and compiled Levin’s files into an installation.

The installation illustrates both the working methods of a scrupulous art critic and the logic of documentation and collecting. On the basis of just one note, Kim Levin’s method may seem chaotic, but presented collectively as an archive they are revealed to be quite systematic. In her route plans, Levin marks interesting exhibitions and those that she has time to visit using colour codes, striking things out and circling items. She records her exhibition observations, ranking the artists and describing and drawing the works she has seen. These enable her later to recall thoughts that came to her mind when viewing the works, and to write them into critiques and reviews.

Levin’s densely written notes are for the most part descriptive, but the observant reader can find in them gems of criticism, such as ”Too clever”; ”Not too subtle!”; ”Mesmerizing”. On Frank Stella, Levin comments: ”Former minimalist who said ’what you see is what you see ’ – gone maximal. Less is more? More is more.” James Turrell makes her wonder whether he is ”Genius… or a con, an artist who’s ridden his one-trick pony for all its worth? You’ll either have a transcendent experience or wonder what the fuss is about”. Levin’s notes have the same concise quality and trenchant humour as her critiques based on them. Moreover, the exhibition provokes thoughts about how the choices of an influential critic also play a part in creating art history.

Kim Levin is a prominent New York art critic and curator. She is a regular contributor to The Village Voice and several international journals. She was President of the International Association of Art Critics 1996–2002, and has received numerous journalistic awards. John Salvest is an Arkansas artist whose object works and installations relate to accumulation. He is Professor of Sculpture at Arkansas State University.

The exhibition was produced in cooperation with John Salvest and by courtesy of Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York.