Artist Presentations - Ben Kinmont

Ben Kinmont

Artist, publisher, antiquarian bookseller living in Sebastopol, California, United States.

Fascinated by the idea of an “edible historiography” and “recipes and representation.” He says, “The booksellers, the culinary historians, the librarians, the collectors, the bibliographers - We all play a different role in this world of rare books.”

“The confusion between [disciplines and cultural fields] often acts as his preferred aesthetic material, such as in a series of performances wherein he contracts to wash dishes for a certain duration, or other works in which he approaches others in order to offer them his services.” -Thom Donovan, from his article 5 Questions for Contemporary Practice with Ben Kinmont, 2011

Kinmont’s website, where you can find a complete list of his projects: http://www.benkinmont.com/

A quick peek at Kinmont’s antiquarian book collection on gastronomy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ddvKPOOUF4

On Becoming Something Else

Ben Kinmont, On Becoming Something Else, Air de Paris private diner, 2009, Restaurant Chapeau Melon, Paris

Begun in 2000, this project is about artists who have transgressed the boundaries of the art world. In 2009, the first iteration was a private event organized with Air de Paris at the restaurant Chapeau Melon, while the second activated the public for the Nouveau Festival at Centre Pompidou. Kinmont worked with seven chefs to produce seven biographical paragraphs about the artists. Recipes were written honoring each artist and the dish was offered on the restaurant menu of each chef. Visitors of the Pompidou could take a menu and visit restaurants to eat the representation of the writing. Kinmont explains, “In order to experience those artworks, you need to eat them and therefore the exhibition space becomes your mouth.”

Sometimes a Nicer Sculpture is to be Able to Provide a Living for Your Family

In 1998 Kinmont began running his own book selling business to help support his family. He says “The artwork is not the business itself, but the contribution to our cost of living.” He concentrates on collecting books about food and wine published before 1840, which to him “provides broader context in which to see domestic activity as meaningful.” On-going project.

Antinomian Press

On-going project. “Needing and unhappy with representation, I began to publish project descriptions. Then, as an agency to support project work, I began to publish work by and about others.” -Kinmont

Kinmont began in 1990 with conducting projects on the street and distributing flyers or “catalytic texts” as a means to initiate them. In 1995 he left his galleries and began to include projects of others “with a focus on ephemera and archival material.” The Antinomian Press began when Kinmont devoted himself to representing artists whose works “might have been forgotten and were only reachable through their notebooks and archives.”

Visit his site for the Antinomian Press for the interesting historical background for the naming and logo design of his publishing operation. http://antinomianpress.org/about.html

Moveable Type no Documenta

For ten days Kinmont met with people and asked them “what was meaningful in their lives, how that meaning was created, and if it could be understood as art.” These conversations bring into question the value of museums in the discourse of art and life. The interactions were published and distributed to visitors in the exhibition space.

Quote of Ben Kinmont relating to our class discussions of “art world” boundaries, appearing in Thom Donovan’s article 5 Questions for Contemporary Practice with Ben Kinmont, 2011:

“At one point, in the late 1990s, I had to decide whether to continue participating in the art world or to become an antiquarian book dealer who devoted 100% of his time to working with rare books. I decided to continue as an artist and bookseller. I stayed in both worlds because I realized that I was from the art world, that its history was my point of reference, and that its community was something to which I felt responsible, even if I was disappointed in it somehow. But to try and go on, I had to focus on connections to things outside of the art world, whether they were notions of social responsibility or exchanges with other disciplines. I was trying to broaden the range of what could be considered art and to open it up to questions from new audiences and participants. The art world was not enough on its own.”