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RALPH RUGOFF has a message for all you lazy art viewers: Get to work.
Not that he would state it so rudely. The director of the Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, a forum for presentation and discussion of contemporary culture at the California College of the Arts, is a gentle persuader. He's a brainy, shy person who slips provocative ideas into exhibitions and catalog essays and lets them develop as they will.
His trademark group shows explore such themes as sight gags and slapstick, therapeutic values attributed to art and proposals for national monuments, but they always demand audience engagement.
"The main current in my curatorial work is putting a focus on the viewer's role," Rugoff said, walking up a metal staircase in CCA's industrial-style facility south of Market Street and into a gallery where his latest show, "A Brief History of Invisible Art," offers little to see but much to ponder. "It's your experience, but so much of it is what you bring to it."
Some visitors who bring nothing poke their heads through the door, see the nearly vacant gallery and assume that the show hasn't been installed. Those who are attuned to conceptual art -- and comfortable with the notion that art can be more than what meets the eye -- find the gallery quite full. There's a sculpture by Michael Asher made of a column of air propelled from a box on the ceiling and a ghost of Andy Warhol on a pedestal once occupied by the artist. Paintings by Bruno Jakob were rendered in water that has evaporated. A snapshot of a film crew is all that remains of a movie by Jay Chung, shot with no film in the camera.
"I want to get people to think of themselves as collaborators when they come to an exhibition," Rugoff said. "I love entertainment, but I don't think art should be treated as entertainment. Big museums are in a jam these days because they are trying to sell tickets. Sometimes they end up selling their shows as if they were entertainment, as if you could come as a passive spectator. This is a show where you have to come as a reader, as an interpreter. You have to think."
Rugoff...