It is becoming more and more popularly acknowledged that the art exhibition as a specific experiential format has played a large role in enabling art’s maintained, perhaps rising status, often more so than then content of the artworks within. In a paper delivered at Serpentine Gallery in 2009, Dorothea von Hantelmann argued that the exhibition format, from the salon to the biennial, has ‘performed’ a crucial favor (the word favor being my particular elaboration on her idea) for art, of creating a psychologically empathetic relationship between audience and artwork, in which the audience has an expectation of democratic subjectivity, and therein affords the work automatic value. There is plenty of precedent, of course, to the idea that meaning in art is constructed at least partially by the expectations the audience brings to the work, going back at least to Hans-Robert Jauss’ reception theory of the 1960s. It has become fashionable, at least in curatorial circles, to place emphasis on the role of the curator in helming the viewer’s experience with an exhibition – and to remind others, as Boris Groys notably has done, that the word curate originates from the Latin verb, curare, to heal, it is a more specific development to examine how the multiple experiential characteristics of the exhibition as a device in itself, can perpetuate art’s economic, political, and social status.
In view of this, selfportrait will launch a new project, beginning next week, that aims to respond to the often overlooked experiential nuances of the contemporary art exhibition.
Recommended Reading:
The Triangulation of Value – Nav Haq – Afterall 23
Politics of Installation – Boris Groys – e-flux 2
Reception History, from U. Toronto
Doug Wada - Untitled (Bags, Winter) - 2008 - oil on linen, from Look Again at Marlborough Chelsea
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