Process and/as product

I’ve been meeting and brainstorming and chatting informally with a couple of people about exhibition plans and ideas and am trying to work through one particular curatorial hurdle that seems to be a recurring theme in a lot of my aesthetic interests. Basically, the problem boils down to the question of how to represent process-based work in an exhibition that is not only clear and understandable, but also engaging, representative of the process itself and aesthetically interesting.

And some of my favourite artists create work that’s appealing because of the process that has created or informed it; people like Geoffrey Farmer, who creates insanely detailed installations with a nexus of complicated reference points and narratives that inform them, or Candice Breitz, whose videos of music fans singing along to their favourite albums are enthralling, but can come off as patronizing to their subjects without the context of how she goes about selecting, screening and recording the singers’ performances.

Geoffrey Farmer, The Last Two Million Years, 2007,
installation view, Courtesy Catriona Jeffries Gallery

So I’ve been trying to rack my brain for examples of exhibitions or curatorial projects that managed to convey this process or back story in a compelling way – a way where the final product of the exhibition is as engaging as the process that goes into it. The only thing I’ve come up with so far are some of Ydessa Hendeles’ exhibitions at her own gallery space: particularly the acclaimed “Predators and Prey” show where objects that ostensibly have little to no relationship to one another were put together in such ingenious and original ways that Hendeles’ own interpretations and aesthetic connections between objects – the process of her collecting and displaying these objects in a particular way – became the central curatorial methodology.

It’s an intensely personal and risky way to group artworks and artifacts, but when it works (and her shows often work in surprising and surreal ways) it seems to offer possibilities for a new way forward in organizing exhibitions.

I’m open to other suggestions of successful and compelling exhibitions that have tried to address the presentation of process in the gallery space as well. Anyone have any great examples of a gallery/curator/artist that has successfully overcome this obstacle? Or failed spectacularly while trying?