Andrea Fraser
1965–

Since the late 1980s Andrea Fraser has examined the modes of production, exchange of capital, and display and circulation of works in the art world, with often pointed and provocative results. Bridging the realms of performance, institutional critique, and video, much of Fraser’s work insists on an engagement with an audience. Thus in the guise of a docent in early videotaped performances such as Museum Highlights (1989) and Welcome to the Wadsworth (1991), she draws on archival sources to script museum tours in which she cleverly broaches the relationship between taste and class, cultural philanthropy and welfare policy, or cultural institutions and urban segregation.

Fraser frequently focuses her work on the relationship between artists and their patrons. For Untitled she proposed a project in which she would videotape a sexual encounter between herself and a collector, who would commission the work, an arrangement that was facilitated by her gallery. Shot in a hotel room from a high camera angle, the silent, unedited video is but one component of Fraser’s project, which also involves the process of negotiation and reception of the work, including detailed agreements setting parameters for how it may be displayed and circulated. In Untitled both Fraser and her patron are on display, and the intimate details of their transaction are laid bare for our examination. As Fraser has explained, Untitled “was about taking the economic exchange of buying and selling art and turning it into a very personal exchange.” Number one in an edition of five, this DVD was acquired from the participating collector as a partial gift and partial purchase, an arrangement negotiated by the artist, and another step in the sequence of exchanges that constitute the work.

Introduction

Andrea Rose Fraser (born 1965) is a performance artist, mainly known for her work in the area of Institutional Critique. Fraser is based in New York and Los Angeles and is currently Department Head and Professor of Interdisciplinary Studio of the UCLA School of Arts and Architecture at the University of California, Los Angeles.