The Curated Art Fair and the Art Fair Curator
Art fairs have existed, such as we know them today, for already a few decades, but it wasn't until relatively recently that we witnessed the "category of the new" in the shape of the arrival of the curator in the world of art fairs, and the consequent promotion in the media of some of them as "curated fairs." There's clearly something in the air. It is more and more evident that the art fair is resorting to the curator to act as an enabler or facilitator of that positioning via projects that are specifically created for the fair. As a consequence, we shouldn't be surprised that the curator's presence at art fairs is each time more overwhelming, given that it is becoming the differentiating element for making an art fair stand out among the mass of fair proposals. In that type of entente cordiale the fair benefits from the prestige, know-how and contacts of the curator. The curator, in exchange, gets access to a new curatorial platform.
That's why the critic and curator Amanda Coulson has managed VOLTA in the capacity of executive director since 2004; the former editor of Flash Art in the USA and curator at P.S.1, Andrea Bellini, joined Artissima as fair director in 2006; since 2007 Neville Wakefield has been the curator of the Frieze Projects section, overseeing projects specifically commissioned for the fair; CIRCA PR has relied on curators in its selection committee since its beginnings in 2005, as has PhotoMiami, inaugurated in 2006; and, finally, Cay Sophie Rabinowitz, a curator between 1996 and 2003 and former chief editor of Parkett magazine in USA, was until recently artistic director of Art Basel and Art Basel Miami Beach.
All of the above examples leave no doubt about the growing involvement of curators with art fairs. In the introduction to this book I quoted Roberta Smith who declares her "aversion" to the proliferation of art fairs. She says, "I wonder if it will be the artists or the dealers who decide there's a different way to do them." I sincerely believe that it is the curator who nowadays, in collaboration with the artist and gallery owner, is capable of re-launching the art fair in an attempt to make it more arresting and interesting. Progressively, more curators are finding a place in selection committees, which stems from a sense and desire for "transparency" in order to avoid polemics directed at the selection process.
Transparency, pedagogy and interest are precisely the right terms to take into consideration when one, from a position and vision as a curator, gets involved with an art fair. However, the figure of the "art fair curator" entails a series of tasks and practices directed at giving the fair a curatorial concept or converting it into a curatorial platform. Why not believe that we are facing a new development in some curatorial practices, which are expanding from a museum or institutional sphere towards a much more commercial sphere, where they seek to reformulate the art (market) system? Why insist on the idea that a fair must only give priority to economic matters and not to cultural and social ones?
We should expand the merely commercial objectives in order to promote an active curatorship that contributes to a personal and engaged vision of an "institutionalized" artistic format, whose selection criteria until very recently have trailed behind whatever was happening in other art fields. That basically means that for almost 40 years the selection committees of the majority of art fairs were composed of galleries which are neither sufficiently impartial nor sufficiently transparent in order to use their power of inclusion or exclusion well. What might also seem surprising is the idea of an "active interventionism" in a platform directed merely by economic rules. But, it permits a link to what Deleuze calls intercesseurs, or "mediators," and the concept of "series." And basically it's about the possibility, in the capacity as a curator, to propose, together with other role-players, new visions, ideas and possible changes in a scenario that up until now was not much explored.
During a brief period and within a very specific space and time, elitism becomes popular. And thus, the relationship of the art professional with popular culture, as well as his participation in the art market, is called into question.
Curators (on the) Move: From Infomediator to Guerrilla Curator
We are experiencing a clear paradigm shift in curatorial practice and its context. Having said that, it seems that the reformulation of the practice by independent curators hardly obtains any institutional feedback in the form of debates, panels and publications. Undoubtedly, the same principles that general society follows in its love for karaoke--to paraphrase the Swedish guru economists Ridderstrale and Nordstrom --are also followed by the institutions and art fairs, namely: very little innovation, simple imitation, and repetition of the same pattern and same people. It is the same with the biennials.
But let's go step by step. Matthew Collings says, "Curators are enormous now--what caused their rise? Partly it was teaching and the creation of new university-style courses with titles such as 'Creative Curating.' And partly it was the rise of theory--someone's got to study that stuff [...] But now there's a definite new type of curator, attractively hustlerish and modern, akin to DJs or fashion people--someone in a definite scene, one you'd like to be in yourself." Something similar is also confirmed by Art Journal, the magazine of art schools in the United States. As artist Ernesto Pujol says, "This is the Age of the Curator: everybody wants to be a curator."
With or without glamour, new times suggest new contexts, which in turn demand new curatorial approaches. Curatorship such as we understand it today, unlike the voodoo curator and the "classic" organizer of exhibitions, is quite a recent profession. Etymologically speaking from the original concept curator--"guardian" or "caretaker" in Latin--we have passed in a short time to the figure of the guest curator and from there to the omnipresent freelance curator. So, it would seem that its essence is marked by a shift from the original verb "to guard" towards the possibly more spurious "to promote."
After all, what manifests itself in the art world in general, and in the curatorial practices in particular, is nothing more than a reflection of that "Baumanian" modernity that has exchanged institutions and "solid" procedures for actions and "liquid" relationships. So, if in the beginning the curator was--as stated by Viktor Misiano--"an emissary of a group of artists or a single artist," later an übercurator in the manner of Harald Szeemann --a term coined by Patricia Bickers and which, on the other hand, Documenta has been accentuating and promoting during its different editions--and now an art DJ--as suggested by Elisabeth Lebovici and Marius Babias, consciously or not connecting Nicolas Bourriaud's idea of post-production--or the "conceptual organizer of the event" in the words of Carlos Basualdo, these descriptions clearly demonstrate the ambiguity of the practice itself as well as the context in which it is developed.
This corroborates that it is difficult for art to dissociate itself from the social forms into which it is deployed. Those forms, as much as they represent structures, institutions and patterns, "can no longer (and are not expected) to keep their shape for long, because they decompose and melt faster than the time it takes to cast them." This context of chronic uncertainty is therefore characterized by "the separation and divorce of power and politics" of the nation-state and "creates newly emancipated powers" which are not politically controlled. As a consequence of that divorce, "state organs are encouraged to 'subsidiarize' and 'contract out' a growing volume of functions they previously performed [and thus] become a playground for the notoriously capricious and inherently unpredictable market forces and/or are left to the private initiative and care of individuals."
Baumann provides us with a theoretical framework that allows us to outline an interesting double-edged analogy with the curatorial practice. On one hand, there is the curator as "emancipated figure" who assumes the function of a mediator between the artist and the museum, whose "capacity of being an in-between [...] is based on the idea of the involvement of artists, as well as intellectuals and outsiders." On the other hand, the shift from a museum-style management, centered on conservation and acquisition of a permanent collection, towards a thematic or monographic exhibitions policy, which prioritizes objectives of media coverage and increasing visitor numbers, suggests a situation in which the curator becomes a mediator between the institution and the public, and "the functions he has previously developed" are temporarily "subcontracted" by the museum.
All of the above would perfectly fit the idea of the curator as an "infomediary" in the manner of Ridderstrale and Nordstrom. If the information society--as they state--inaugurates the "death of the intermediary as we know him/her--and instead we will get infomediaries: information brokers who eliminate unnecessary role-players in the value chain by simultaneously functioning as purchase agents for customers and sales departments for sellers, [then] Why give your money to a travel agent? Why give your money to a traditional record company?"
If we transfer and adapt this economic concept to the curatorial field, we will be able to understand the curator's work as the work of a sophisticated infomediator--I prefer this term instead of "infomediary"--who generates, manages and distributes information indiscriminately through the different channels that intervene in the process, from the conception of an exhibition to its opening and conclusion.
The art markets and the art world are going through changes. The shift of a society based on products towards a society based on information, which in the art world is reflected in a corresponding shift of collecting towards exhibiting, entails another, and if I may say so, more radical change: that from workplace towards workspace. This space-time scenario allows us to approach, as an example of changing curatorial practices, the figure of the guerrilla curator.
Even though the practice of the independent curator carries a lot of "guerrilla tactics," I'm referring in this case specifically to those curators who set and even conceive exhibitions in unconventional spaces: offices, shops and shopping windows, factories, townhouses and abandoned or temporarily unoccupied flats. The concept not only references the "original" meaning of the term "guerrilla warfare," or the more recent "guerrilla terrorism," with moving targets that appear and disappear in an instant, but is also lately suggested by the famous "Guerrilla Stores" of Comme des Garçons, the first of which was launched in 2004 on Chausseestrasse in Berlin Mitte, and whose model is now being introduced in cities like Athens, Barcelona, Glasgow and Warsaw (to name but a few). "A new concept, that rejects the conventional display methods usually associated with glamour, and to which Comme des Garçons refers as 'Guerrilla Stores.'" Isn't that exactly what the guerrilla curator does when he "rejects the conventional exhibition methods"?
Regarding that subject, there are many independent curators who make interesting and risky exhibitions in unconventional places, thus showing us how art can rediscover and reformulate the cityscape by means of recovering unusual, forgotten or abandoned spaces, like Lara Pan's "ALL RIGHT" inside unoccupied commercial premises on the Rue Vertois 23 in Paris; or the original "Veladas de Santa Lucia" organized by Clemencia Labin in the homes of residents of Santa Lucia in Maracaibo; or the "guerrilla intervention" by Democracia in Graz on the garbage containers of the city.
New Fairism
As I previously mentioned, new times demand new answers. Museums, art centers and biennials are going through radical changes, although not all of them are willing to "abandon," as it was well put by Jonas Ekeberg, "the limited discourse of the art work as a mere object, neither the complete institutional framework which accompanies it, a framework which the 'extended' field of contemporary art had simply inherited from high modernism, along with its white cube, its top-down attitude of curators and directors, its link to certain (insider) audiences, and so on and so forth."
For some years now we have witnessed new critical thinking regarding the position and function of the artistic institution, which has crystallized into the so-called "New Institutionalism" or neo-institutionalism, partly borrowed from the field of sociology: a sociological perspective of the institutions and how they interact with and affect society and the individual. In other words, now it's not only a question of economic success (sale of products and services, visitor numbers or media coverage) for an institution, but also a question of its own legitimacy or raison d'être and how that influences or affects human behavior. This New Institutionalism simply re-uses and renovates the strategies of institutional critique initiated by conceptual art: "Early practitioners of institutional critique held out the hope that they could transform museums, provide more democratic relationships with audiences."
This allows us to trace an analogy and launch the idea of a "New Fairism" : a new way of understanding and reformulating the function of the fair as an institution and artistic structure. How can we make it so that the art fair will be part market, part meeting point, part laboratory, part pedagogical workshop and part curatorial platform? If the "New Institutionalism," as Ekeberg points out, denotes a "new belief in the importance of the institutions, combined with a wide definition of what an institution stands for and with a focus on institutional value," then why not resort to the term "New Fairism" in a speculative as well as practical manner? Isn't the art fair similar to Malraux's "Museum Without Walls," which allows large layers of society to access the latest art in a more democratic, less intimidating and more anonymous manner? Isn't an art fair a "cultural house" that takes art from city to city?
Undoubtedly, right now is the time when deep structural changes in the art world are taking place. These are characterized--in the words of Katya Garcia-Antón--by "a market expansion which has stimulated new art fair models, such as the Frieze Art Fair in London, which destabilize (without even beginning to evaluate their impact) the ancient borders between the private/commercial and the public/non-commercial. [...] On the other hand, important European patrons (individual and corporate) have recently decided to create their own institutions or awards, thus redirecting to the private sector a vital financial support for the public entities." In other words, the art fair in its process of transformation is taking up functions as well as resources from other artistic institutions. Here again we should ask ourselves if this is a desirable development. I would answer that this is simply a current trend that is going through art, just like waning biennalism or the fashion for "posh" architecture buildings. Turning a blind eye or tearing your clothes in anger because of this would be like "saying you won't participate in the market," to quote Jerry Saltz, "because you refuse to breathe air that's polluted. Unless you live in a bubble, you may have no choice. Even if you're not making money, that's your relationship to the market."
If "curatorship is a creative sublimation of forces such as: the quest for prestige of bourgeois patrons, the tickle of legitimacy and the cultural disinfection of state bureaucracies, the search for new hegemonic powers of the old nationalisms, and the ardor of those two omnipresent erotic forces--vanity and greed," then curatorship in an art fair even acquires a halo of transparency; therefore this is not about metamorphosing interests or doubtful ideologies, thus becoming an exercise in perverting the market's implacable logic. Wakefield said the phrase "to throw sand in the vaseline of commercial art." It's those small active micro-interventions (paraphrasing Bruno Latour) that mark the way from where the fairs have been to what they can become--and not just the cynical mentioning of a couple of curators in a press release.
On the other hand, curatorial practice signifies a critical approach to art and the artistic system of our times. I understand that we as curators have to "widen" their format and to offer, by means of experimentation and innovation, other exits different from the infinite number of fairs that resemble convenient and tyrannical Procrustean beds. How can we offer a new perspective on the art fair? How do we redefine it artistically? Nowadays it is expected that the art on display will be of the highest quality and, maybe, that it will aspire to openly legitimize the presence of certain artworks into the History of Art, thus "competing" in sanctioning capacity with Documenta or Venice, as some of the best artworks are premiered at Art Basel. Javier Peres of Peres Projects says it clearly: "My only real aim is to ensure the passage of the artists I represent into the annals of Art History, a very simple but not so easy modest goal."
The Curator's Wall and Relational Curating
If "institutions," as Iwona Blazwick tells us, "will tend towards systems of display that reflect the complex socioeconomic and geopolitical contexts within which they operate," it is logical then that art fairs will represent their highest expression. "Can we combine," Blazwick wonders, "continuity with the flexibility to embrace new modes of artistic production and reception?" Current critique of art fairs is merely based, I'm afraid, on preconceived notions we all know too well. "Not only is there no leading style," Schjeldahl complains, "there is no noticeable friction between one style and another. These impressions might fade if you focused on any particular work, but fairs destroy focus." I share the idea that many fairs lack a certain "focus," but it wasn't until Szeemann's "Questioning Reality - Pictorial Worlds Today" in 1972 that Documenta got a focus of Weltanschauung!
I have always been a firm believer that if one participates in certain international circuits--be they museums, biennials or art fairs--he/she should question the context and not take anything for granted. The thing that made me consider the art fair as a possible curatorial platform was my frustration with the institutional system and the "waiting list," or rather, the irrefutable fact that although a project has been accepted one has to wait normally two years until one can see it effectively exhibited in the museum. That's why I took advantage of the invitation sent to me by the CIRCA PR organizers to curate a show, which I had already thought up some time ago--"State(s) of Anxiety"--on the art fair grounds in 2005, inside what would become a permanent section, conceived by me and titled "In the Spot," which would be focused on working with the artworks exhibited at the fair.
For Mary Jane Jacob, "our capacity for being with unfamiliar art depends on our capacity to feel comfortable with the uncertainty and the ambiguity." On the other hand, "the space of curating is an empty space." If we take for granted that art fairs are places of "uncertainty" and "ambiguity," I took that idea of the empty space to the extreme in 2007, when instead of selecting the artists before the opening of the art fair, I actually invited other curators to carry out "In the Spot," as they say, "on the spot," or in other words, a type of instant curating. And the funniest thing is that the assigned booths for that section, on the opening day of the fair, remained absolutely empty as a sort of statement (which, in the midst of the packed audience and the rest of the occupied stands, appeared as a decadent luxury).
From that moment, each day an invited curator passed through the fair and conceived a thematic exhibition using the works hanging in the booths of the participating galleries. Which, in practical terms, means that each curator passes through the fair galleries in the morning, gathers the information to create a concept, asks if he can borrow the works (in which case most galleries happily agree), and then hangs them in the predetermined booths, just as if it were a regular white-cube exhibition. That same afternoon there is a presentation to the audience and the curator explains his concept in person, thus facilitating a discussion and even a critique of his curatorial proposal. The following day, the exhibition is dismantled and the works are returned--after all, we are in an art fair and the mission of galleries there is to sell--and later the next curator carries out a new exhibition. In 2007 the invited curators were Amanda Coulson and Silvia Karman Cubiñá.
Although curators are limited to working only with art pieces on display, which I actually believe to be something very positive, the art fair facilitates an instant, riskier and more experimental feedback. The "In the Spot" curator generates a narrative, thus resolving the Schjeldahlian lack of "focus" in a context where conceptualization, selection, production, exhibition, inauguration and social interaction--unlike what usually happens in a museum or a biennial--are all compressed into only one day.
Another one of my "fair" proposals was The Last Painting Show, an exhibition about painting without painting comprised of photo-based work and videos. It seemed to me not only ironic but also very challenging. I searched among the artworks to be exhibited at the fair for a possible concept for the exhibition, and PhotoMiami granted me a generous stand at the entrance of the fair. What's more, last April at CIRCA PR 08 we conceived a "Curator's Choice" section : some invited curators--among them Elvis Fuentes and Lara Pandurovic--made a selection of artists in the fair they considered emerging, and facilitated thus the collector's decision process.
If the above sounds too optimistic, then the moment for a little self-criticism has arrived: we will have a different look at the fair and at "Art Fair Art," so named by Jack Bankowsky in Artforum magazine in 2005. Among other things, Bankowsky writes of "artists decrying the constant pressure from dealers for fresh work and dealers bemoaning the drain on quality stock."
Although the concept "Art Fair Art" is attractive by the measure in which it reveals its complexity and contradiction, this kind of unconstructive and somewhat alarmist focus sounds too much like déjà vu. Of course, we mustn't omit the fact that fairs inevitably generate fast, sexy and arresting art, but it is the mission of the art dealer himself to arrange a comprehensible and stimulating booth. On the other hand, theme exhibitions curated in situ by the art fair curator, which end up hung on the "curator's wall," bring the advantage that the selected artworks are not subordinated to the concept, something that group exhibitions are normally accused of; the artworks themselves bring the concept to a less intimidating and canonized place. Finally, this "liquid" focus doesn't exclusively favor the cognoscenti, nor does it denote a particular curatorial arrogance.
We could call that curatorial practice of dealing, exchange and social correspondence "relational curating," given that this is the original and pre-Bourriaudian meaning that the adjective implies. However, we could also interpret it mutatis mutandis in terms of "relational aesthetics," in the sense that it is about a criterion of artistic curatorship or a lecture about certain works, which facilitate an immediate and experimental exchange of ideas among the people who are present and involved. "The possibility which relational art gives (an art which takes as a theoretical framework the sphere of human interactions and its social context, rather than the declaration of a symbolic and private space) is a witness," writes Bourriaud in the introduction to his bestseller, "to a radical shift of the aesthetic, cultural and political goals that are being questioned by modern art." In that way, the art fair curator appeals in his thematic exhibition to concepts like "spectator's participation" and "live experience." The curator--just like the Bourriaudian artist--abandons his "ivory tower" and finds himself immersed in the social streams of the art fair. Besides, we could associate this idea as well with Bourriaud's "co-existence criterion": the importance of the opening and the idea of seeing something and discussing it at the same time.
There are countless examples of art fairs with that type of curatorial ambition, such as the new VOLTA NY's "The Eye of the Beholder," curated by Amanda Coulson and Christian Viveros; Art Dubai with "Desperately Seeking Paradise," a presentation of contemporary Pakistani art curated by Salima Hashmi; a survey on Latin American art, "En el Posterior de las Américas" by independent curator Omar-Pascual Castillo for MIART; and "Ephemeral Fringes" at Art Brussels by curator Filip Luyckx, a series of interventions that occupied all kinds of imaginable places in the fair, from resting areas and corridors to entrances and conference halls.
I sincerely believe that in the competitive world of art fairs, the curator can provide a fresh and independent perspective, a reason for which I practice an active policy that favors the presence of curators in selection committees. However, curatorial attempts are still too shy and are limited to designated sections like Art Unlimited, ARCO Brazil or some temporary annual exhibition, to name a few examples. "Formerly a graveyard," writes Bankowsky, "for objects too cumbersome for cash-and-carry sales, Unlimited's application-only, top-dollar floor space is now allocated and organized by a (real!) curator, turning a once-dead museum attached to the live fair into a living museum, a museum that shows, you guessed it, Art Fair Art." However, when I passed by Art Unlimited last June, I was unimpressed; I couldn't detect a curator's hand nor any type of narrative, connection or interpretation of current artistic issues. The section needs a revamp, because, as Ralph Rugoff says, "A show featuring an unrelated succession of artworks, no matter how good they are, is always going to be a bit like listening to Top 40 radio: it gives you nothing else to do, in the end, but stand there and admire how marvelous it all is. [...] A great collective exhibition, on the other hand, asks from its audience to establish connections. Like an orgy, it makes groups from things, thus creating stimulating and unpredictable combinations."
These sections and projects fully confirm that the fair is usurping more and more functions that would normally be considered institutional. For Bankowsky it is very clear that the alliance existing between the art dealer, the artist and the fair directors "provides a validating service in the form of a breed of 'special' projects available only at the fair, thus ensuring the attendance of not just shoppers but that market-wary middleman, the critic." Undoubtedly, Frieze, with its Frieze Projects, has converted into the biggest representative of this trend, and the British Cultural Minister James Purnell is ready to assign more funds to those projects given that "the Frieze art fair raises public awareness of contemporary art, provides opportunities for artists, stimulates the UK's contemporary art market and makes a significant contribution to London's economy." It's more than clear that Mr. Purnell believes in the great virtues of city branding! Although naturally this will happen to the detriment of other, less glamorous and less popular arts institutions, it's even less surprising that some of the Frieze projects turn out to be riskier and more attractive than those of the Tate Modern, which--in the opinion of Lynne Cooke--has limited itself to promoting the "already sacred." Besides, another thing that attracts our attention is that a fair like Frieze has readopted and re-launched the early '80s idea of the curator as an instigator or initiator of artist's projects (commissions). Perhaps nowadays it is this--directing artist's projects at an art fair--that is the most exciting alternative!
Art fairs present very hectic logistics and production schedules that require a high level of concentration, which we are not always able to attain. Undoubtedly there are still other exhibition contexts that are very necessary and capable of generating significance!
10 Guidelines for a Curated Art Fair
1. The artistic director is (or has been) a curator.
2. The selection committee mostly consists of curators.
3. In order to position the fair with more transparency, the curator personally contacts the artists and galleries that he is interested in exhibiting.
4. The curator decides the artistic thread of the fair and advises the galleries about the type of works and artists to exhibit.
5. The curator collaborates, before the opening of the fair, in the active search for possible collectors for exhibited works.
6. The fair has curated sections for which participating galleries can send in artist's proposals.
7. The fair has an "instant curating" section, a conceptual exhibition conceived from works borrowed directly from the booths of the galleries.
8. The curator actively participates in the search for collectors, museum directors and other personalities from the art world in order to stimulate their visit to the fair.
9. The curator organizes a series of panels or talks during the fair aimed at forging a theoretical framework--wherein aspects related to the fair are analyzed--and promoting the pedagogical mission of the fair.
10. The curator will carry out guided visits during the fair with the purpose of introducing collectors to art dealers and promoting the works of their artists, potentially generating sales.
Paco Barragan
Paco Barragan is an independent curator based in Madrid.
The Art Fair Age: On Art Fairs as Urban Entertainment Centers; Art Fair Curators; Expanded Painting; Collecting; and New Fairism.
by Paco Barragán
Published by CHARTA, Milan
200 pages, 68 B/W illustrations
29 euros
2008
)
)
)