Flatland
The difference between artworks and their documentation
images online is collapsing. So is the prestige economy of traditional
galleries
Far more people see art on screens than in museums. The gallery is no
longer the primary exhibition space; the Internet is. As
documentation—photographs or videos that capture a finished work of art,
usually installed within a gallery—are posted to the Internet and then
dispersed and multiplied via likes and shares, online viewers become the
overwhelming majority of an exhibition’s audience. The digital image is
supplanting the art object. All works, regardless of their material
constituents, are flattened, scaled down to several hundred pixels.
Consequently, the digital photographic image can be understood as the
homogenizing, ubiquitous medium of our era.
If the Internet is the main space in
which art meets its audience, then documentation media must be
considered an artistic medium in its own right, the most consequential
representation of an artist or curator’s work. Artworks exist not as
physical entities, but as JPEGs, and their visibility relies not on
their physical presence within a gallery but on their online
accessibility. The gallery, then, serves not as the “true” exhibition
venue but the site of a photo shoot—the backdrop to the installation
photo. It provides the opportunity to document art within an
institutionalized context in preparation for its release into online
circulation.
Aware that the physical exhibitions they design will eventually be
re-presented immaterially, curators may adapt their practice to
accommodate an online audience, leaning toward photogenic artworks and
exhibition designs. But as artists and curators anticipate the Internet
as the ultimate exhibition space, what function will the physical
exhibition space serve? If installing works in galleries is only a means
to an end—i.e. the documentation image—will the gallery become
unnecessary?
Traditionally, we think of the gallery as having the following
functions: providing an exhibition space that allows the public to view
art; offering the artist and the curator exposure and access to their
consumers; and acting as an intermediary between artists and the market,
providing artists with the potential to earn an income as a
professional. The first two functions, which connect cultural producers
with their audiences, can be executed much more efficiently on the
Internet. Artists have the ability to create vast social networks
online, promote themselves and their artworks, and use social media
platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Tumblr to share images
themselves. Further, while galleries restrict how, when, and where their
represented artists show their work to keep demand high, the attention
economy rewards artists who produce and share frequently, encouraging
artists to be productive and prolific. The Internet allows the artist
more autonomy, more agency over the dispersion and reception of their
work. Artists can be more effectual than the gallery in cultivating
attention and connecting with their audiences. Yet the gallery continues
to have the upper hand in connoting value within the art market, and
the white cube continues to be the quintessential marker of art-world
status.
Most professional artists consider gallery representation as the
primary route to and provider of financial stability. Curators, too,
rely on such institutions to fund their careers. While online social
networking provides the potential for artists to garner attention from
collectors and other sources of income, collectors need to be convinced
that their purchases will be secure investments. Gallery representation
and their contracts offer the artist the credentials necessary to be
viewed as a worthwhile investment. Collectors depend on trusted gallery
directors and museum curators as professional arbitrators of market
value. But if we no longer require the physical presence of galleries
and their exhibition spaces, could we imagine a virtual alternative that
connotes the same level of market credibility? Do artists and curators
need to be included in physical exhibition spaces in order to create
income-generating reputations, or could their presence on a particular
curated website offer the same art-world imprimatur?
As critic Michael Sanchez has pointed out, Contemporary Art Daily, a
blog updated daily with images of exhibitions from around the world,
“has effectively redirected traffic away from individual gallery
websites and print publications to become a primary point of access for
information about exhibitions.” Each exhibition is laid out identically:
the site’s home page offers the title of the show accompanied by four
images, the venue, the artists, and the dates. Clicking on the title
brings the viewer to an impressive quantity of installation photos (each
easily shared with a button-click), sequenced to provide wide
installation views before narrowing down to specific objects and
details. This standardized format provides a systematic and formulaic
experience of every exhibition, and in some ways, usurps the role of the
curator by linearly directing the viewing experience.
Accessing
work this way is undeniably different from experiencing art objects
firsthand. But rather then debating the merits and limitations of
experiencing art on the screen, this essay locates the exhibition,
rather than the viewer, as subject. The online-viewing phenomenon is
taken as a given.
Though Contemporary Art Daily showcases exhibitions from a huge pool
of galleries, photos on the site become almost indistinguishable from
one another, save for the art. The white cube retains its place in the
documentation image: Each photo has a white-walled backdrop and minimal
accompanying text, mimicking the aesthetic of white-cube galleries.
Situating works within a simulated white cube maintains the illusion of
prestige and credibility traditionally conveyed by the gallery space.
Only now, the gallery-cum-backdrop contextualizes the work not within
physical space but within the democratized playing field of the
Internet, while specifying the images’ art-world context. Thus as these
images are dispersed online and become severed from their original
sources, removed from their proverbial pedestals as they are posted amid
a nonhierarchical stream of non-art content on the Tumblr dashboard or
Facebook newsfeed, their white-walled backdrop differentiates them from
the heterogeneous images around them and acts as signifier of their
high-art status.
Though digital-documentation images are supplanting exhibition space
and we can even imagine the obsolescence of the exhibition space as it
moves to the screen, the traditions and formalities of the gallery still
hold prominence. Indicative of the clean exclusivity of private,
difficult-to-access shows, the white cube has become a metaphor—not a
physical necessity but a necessary signifier of institutional
acceptance. Artwork does not require installation within the white cube,
and the white cube does not require art objects. Instead, art objects
require the transitive value that the white cube implies.
Galleries’ sole purpose becomes clearer: They are reception spaces
that redistribute associative status and function as arbitrators of
market value. The gallery’s primary role is not as a place in which to
view work—openings will be attended regardless of whether any art is
present—but as an authoritative resource for cultural clout.
With the Internet as the most efficient means of art distribution,
and the gallery as the most efficient means of increasing one’s cultural
value, exhibitions located somewhere between the two can potentially
reap the benefits of both worlds. Hotelart.us, an ongoing project
organized by me, Jonathan Stanish, and Ian Swanson, initially avoids the
white cube by installing and documenting physical exhibitions staged in
non-gallery locations, and then later presenting the documentation in a
gallery. By using publicly accessible venues like hotels, spas, and
department stores, hotelart.us can produce frequent and site-specific
exhibitions that last only as long as it takes to document them.
Audiences don’t view the exhibition as initially installed in real life.
Instead, the exhibition is presented on Tumblr in conjunction with a
gallery reception, which presents projected documentation of the
original installation. In this case, the images themselves break free
from the homogenized aesthetic of the white cube, and the white cube
holds no conventional art objects during the opening. The gallery is
instead used strategically as means of solidifying art-world ties and
contextualizing the project.
Hotelart.us reception at Interstate Projects for the exhibition, “Cultural Affair.” An installation photo of Chino Amobi’s Illuminazioni, documented at the Cosmopolitan Hotel, is projected on the wall.
These gallery installations and receptions are also documented,
creating multiple versions of the exhibition online, highlighting the
mutability of representation. As artworks are understood through their
digital representation, and because many different images can represent
the same artwork, it becomes hard to locate a single manifestation of
the work as “authentic”—or as any more valuable than any other version.
The notion that an artwork has an intrinsic meaning is undermined. By
offering documentation of the works originally installed offsite, and
then again as projected images within a gallery, hotelart.us emphasizes
that the objects themselves are not the arbiters of their own meaning,
but instead they are defined by a variety of versions that construct
their meanings as they circulate the Web.
A recent project by Joshua Citarella further develops the mutable
exhibition and creates multiple versions of not only the installed
works, but also the gallery space in which they are installed. In
Citarella’s Eldorado Projects, the white cube becomes a stand-in for
itself. Citarella and his peers constructed a three-walled exhibition
space in the woods of upstate New York, invited artists to install works
in the space, and conducted a photo shoot. Using editing software,
Citarella then created many versions of the exhibition by digitally
altering the photographs. The result is a series of installation images
that contradict one another: In some instances, the walls of the room
itself are expanded to create the illusion of a larger space, in other
cases the artworks themselves have been edited and rearranged. The
viewer is unable to discern which images, if any, are unaltered
representations of the space, making the actual dimensions and layout of
the physical exhibition entirely irrelevant.
Josh Citarella’s Eldorado Projects. One of multiple versions of the exhibition space, this image depicts the space as three times larger than its actual size.
Disconnected from any specific institution, location (the woods could
be any woods), or precedent, the freestanding structure resembles the
white cube while inherently unable to perform its traditional functions.
But by using the exhibition space as a jumping-off point rather than
the end product, Citarella expands the definition of the installation
photo and suggests that the physical version of any installation is only
one of many.
Though documentation imagery presents exciting opportunities for
artists and curators to manipulate and recontextualize the traditional
exhibition, this paradigmatic shift is not necessarily beneficial to
everyone. As screens replace exhibition spaces, curators and artists who
cater towards photogenic aesthetics and online audiences will be
rewarded. As digital images become currency, works that are difficult to
translate as documentation are less valuable. While artworks that are
sensually rich (Ann Hamilton’s “the event of a thread” at Park Avenue
Armory), performative (Marina Abramovi’s “The Artist Is Present” at
MoMA), participatory (Thomas Hirschhorn’s “Gramsci Monument” at Forest
Houses in the Bronx) can create robust experiences IRL, the curator
seeking to generate limitless exposure is rewarded best by showcasing
works that are more photogenic in nature. (During the month of July,
Wade Guyton, Guyton/Walker, Kelley Walker at Kunsthaus Bregenz got the
most notes—likes and reblogs—on Contemporary Art Daily, followed by Ben
Schumacher and Carlos Reyes at Tomorrow, Toronto.)
From
Ben Schumacher and Carlos Reyes’s “A Salted Quarterly: Notes from the
Why Axis,” at Tomorrow, in Toronto. Image accessed at Contemporary Art
Daily.
As long as the physical exhibition continues, curators will perhaps
find it advantageous to compose installations through the camera’s
viewfinder, designing exhibitions that are photogenic from several
static viewpoints, anticipating the JPEG as the ultimate product. While
current curatorial discourse continues to position the physical
experience as the guiding impetus, exhibitions that are photogenic will
have significantly larger audiences than those designed with the sensory
experience of the physical viewer as its primary subject.
While screens supplanting galleries may not bode well for performance
or installation artists, it may make such nonarchival works archival.
Works that last a matter of days, minutes, or even seconds, become
archival when photographed. Materials that melt, evaporate, expire, and
decompose are viable options for works that only need to exist long
enough to be captured on camera. Of course the documentation of
ephemeral works is not new with the Internet; artists have long relied
on the camera in order to materialize ephemeral works. But what makes
post-internet documentation different is that works aren’t documented
to become suitable for gallery exhibitions. Instead galleries are used
to document work to make it suitable for online reception.
Galleries are no longer the most effective means of art distribution.
But they still are the most effective facilitators to the art market,
as they connote prestige by acting as authorities on market value. But
if the physical exhibition is only a means of generating documentation
imagery and associative status, can we imagine a more efficient means to
this same end? Perhaps a different backdrop to the installation photo
can be substituted, and artists and curators can circumvent the
institution by forming online platforms and websites that replace the
gallery as the decisive, value-granting authority.
The emergence of “galleries” that operated solely online could be
next. Without the expenses demanded by the physical gallery (i.e. high
rent, utility bills, property insurance, art insurance, building
maintenance, etc.), an online gallery would need to generate
significantly less income to cover its cost of operations. With
virtually no overhead expenses, these “galleries” could afford to offer
their artists a significantly larger percentage of money from sales
while generating the same profit margin for themselves.
Far from limiting artists and curators, the demand for photographic
documentation encourages experimentation and prolific production. Work
can be documented and posted immediately, providing the artist with
instant feedback from their audience via likes and comments and expanded
opportunity to represent and promote themselves, relying less on press
generated by market-driven galleries and institutions that restrict
artists’ freedom to produce prolifically and radically. The
documentation image is a fertile medium with ripe terrain, offering
immediate and potentially vast distribution, contextual mutability, and
institutional commentary. As galleries have been the home of art
objects, URLs are the homes of documentation images and could
potentially connote the prestige and cultural value traditionally
monopolized by the institution. URLs will stand side-by-side with the
names of reputable galleries on artists’ curriculum vitae, and artists
will be rewarded as much for their self-sufficiency as for their ability
to game the gallery system.