If one took Stephen Wright’s recent criticism of Jacques Rancière to heart, the art world would appear just as much a part of Rancière’s idea of the police as the other machines he describes. If one could realize Wright’s ideas in a gallery, it could take the shape of the exhibition Art, Price, and Value: Contemporary Art and the Market.
Aiming to expose the mechanisms of the international art system, the curators have amassed a showing of varied artistic perspectives, “ranging from complete conformity to the prevailing rules of the market to irony and sarcasm and even to an “anti-market” stance taken by those anxious to avoid the commercial aspects of the art market entirely.”
Following Wright, they explain their motivations:
In the last twenty years contemporary art has become a specialised industry with its own rules and a network of professional operators. Artists are drawn into the international dynamics of a highly competitive system. This places them in competition with artists from widely different backgrounds but demands they speak a global and commercial language. In recent years with the growing interest of collectors, galleries and institutions in the west it has become the ideal environment for speculators. With pressing demands for the new and sensational, the process of production and commercialisation is speeded up but art is also increasingly drawn into mass culture and commerce.
The exhibition opened November 14 and will run through January 11 at the Centre for Contemporary Culture Strozzina, Florence, Italy.
Subscribe via RSS
Facebook
Twitter