Art Exhibition Research Articles

Impermanent inhabitations: ‘The everyday’ as a catalyst for transcultural curation

What spaces do we inhabit? How do we become integrated within an unfamiliar community in an unfamiliar territory? Can we ever be fully immersed in a foreign place during art production and exhibition? As I think about the notion of transcultural curating, I start to interrogate questions of belonging and borders.

Curating queerness and queering curation: Exhibiting queer Chinese art in Europe

This article examines the curatorial strategies of the Secret Love exhibition, the biggest queer Chinese art exhibition outside Asia to date. The exhibition brought together 150 works created by 27 queer Chinese artists. It first took place at the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities (MFEA) in Stockholm, Sweden, from 21 September 2012 to 31 March 2013, and subsequently toured to other museums in Europe. The exhibition raises the critical question of how one can curate queer Chinese art when definitions of queerness, Chineseness and art remain unstable and contested. This article proposes queer curating – that is, collecting and exhibiting genders, sexualities and desires in an art gallery or museum setting without reinscribing social norms and reinstating identity categories – as a critical curatorial method. Queer curating challenges fixed identity categories and dominant power relations; it also explores a non-essentialist and anti-identitarian mode of curatorial practice. As an example of transnational and transcultural curating, the Secret Love exhibition compels us to consider how curators can work with the structural constraints of exhibition and discursive spaces to create new curatorial possibilities.

Curating the international profile of contemporary Chinese ink medium art: The Third Chengdu Biennale (2007) and The Met’s Ink Art (2013–14)

This article aims to shed light on a curatorial momentum that was generated at the turn of the 2010s in the broader international art world, allowing contemporary Chinese ink works for the first time within the context of the new century to have a more geographically widespread spotlight of attention under a dual label of the Indigenous and the international. Indeed, in the run up to the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, the curatorial approach to ink art in both China and North America and Europe began to change, emphasizing not only ink’s cultural uniqueness but also its transcultural applicability. The pioneering event to do this was the Third Chengdu Biennale in China, following which there was a noticeable escalation in similar exhibitions across countries like the United States or the United Kingdom. These ranged from the ground-breaking Ink Art: Past as Present in Contemporary China (2013–14) at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met) to exhibitions at international auction houses and commercial galleries, such as Christie’s or the London-based Saatchi Gallery. By focusing on the Third Chengdu Biennale and The Met’s Ink Art exhibition as the two case-study examples, this article elucidates in what specific ways present-day Chinese ink works were framed by these two significant internationally oriented exhibitions, as well as what kind of critical reception this attracted. Drawing from this analysis, the article also provides a reflection on this curatorial momentum’s both achievements and limitations, suggesting that altogether they present an important foundation for present-day curators to devise new constructive ways of positioning Chinese ink as the global contemporary medium of artistic expression.

Imagined Solidarities: Cairo‐Moscow and the Struggle for Realist Art

This essay examines an understudied history of reciprocal art exhibitions between Cairo and Moscow during the Cold War period. It focuses on the work of Gamal El Sagini, Inji Efflatoun, and Hamed Owais, and sets out their role in forging new networks of revolutionary art in the Soviet Union. By addressing how post‐colonial art was received and utilized in Soviet Russia, this article uncovers the extent of Soviet cultural engagement with Egypt, the African national liberation struggles, pan‐Arabism, and international solidarity amongst the Second and Third Worlds more broadly. Offering a more complex reading of the processes behind Soviet involvement in the utopian project of socialist worldmaking, this essay argues for the need to assess critically Soviet claims to anti‐imperialism, peace, international solidarity, and friendship. It discusses the role of art in these processes, and addresses the changing definitions of realism, nationalism, and humanism in the socialist world, making a contribution to alternative understandings of post‐war figuration.

Modern Art Exhibitions as a Form of "Entertainment"

The purpose of the article is to consider modern art exhibitions as a form of “entertainment”. The research methodology consists in the application of analytical method to study theoretical material about the latest modern artistic projects in the field of Ukrainian artistic space as a form of “entertainment”. The hermeneutic method is also used in the aspect of interpreting art exhibitions as a form of “entertainment” through the principle of performance as a sign of metamodernism. Materials from real artistic practices of Krolikowski Art, V. Sydorenko, M. Onatska, O. Rybchenko, A. Petrytskyi, A. Kulagina, A. Logova were included in the study. The scientific novelty of the work is that for the first time modern art exhibitions are considered as a form of “entertainment” through the prism of performance as one of the main signs of metamodernism in modern fine art. Conclusions. Modern art exhibitions, due to the involvement of the principle of performance, as well as elements of “entertainment”, create more opportunities for the recipients to perceive the exposition on an emotional level. In contrast to the traditional contemplation of the works of artists, modern art projects use synthesis. This includes the possibility of attracting spectacular thematic installations, and a video series that allows immersing the viewer in the socio-cultural context of the corresponding historical era. Coloured plastic solutions that correlate with natural elements: earth, water, fire and air (A. Logov); grotesque in a combination of real images and fictional motifs, due to which a complete picture of the world is created to convey the interconnectedness of all living things on the Earth (V. Adkozalova); avant-garde experiments with theatrical costumes by A. Petrytskyi as an element of “entertainment”, which found their embodiment at Ukrainian Fashion Week 2022; the metaphorical project “Cage” by O. Rybchenko as a symbol of the limitation of our internal and external freedom; the release of the first NFT of the “Lexicon” series on the Binance platform, especially for the end of the exhibition “Year Zero. The Idea of Light” and for the 26th anniversary of the creation of his Character by V. Sydorenko; monochrome works by H. Zinkivskyi, which organically combine graphic images and verbal allegorical expressions with philosophical implications; experiments with elements of performance, the use in art exhibitions of the themes of the collective unconscious “Crimea Dreaming”, references to the narratives “Supernova”, “High Hopes”, “Truth is Out There 2” (Krolikowski Art) are all aspects that indicate that modern art exhibitions are a form of “entertainment”.
 Key words: art exhibitions, “entertainment”, visual arts, Krolikowski Art, principle of performance, metamodernism.
 

European Exhibition Poster of the 1890s in the Context of the Development of Art Nouveau

The purpose of the study is to highlight the specific features of the European poster of the 1890s. of the time of its formation on the example of the line of exhibition posters (art posters) of the leading directions of the Art Nouveau style. Methods of research. During the writing of the study, a historical and cultural approach was applied and a systematic approach was used for art-historical, stylistic, and comparative artistic analysis. The scientific novelty consists in conducting an overview art analysis of the exhibition posters of the leading European countries (Great Britain, Germany, Austria and Poland) in comparison with the generalized regularities of the French posters of the period of the 1890s. It was determined that the posters for author’s, personal and group art exhibitions have unique features, and it was outlined all distinctive features of this type of artistic production. The work of the «Glasgow Four» (C. R. Mackintosh, J. G. McNair, the Macdonald sisters) in the field of linear direction posters and the works of other authors were considered. Features of linear organization and individual floreal elements in the posters of German-Austrian Secession artists (F. von Stuck, L. von Hoffmann, P. Behrens, G. Klimt, K. Moser, J. Olbrich and others) were identified on the occasion of various level exhibitions in Munich, Berlin, Vienna in the 1890s. The parameters of the formation of the national and romantic trend in the exhibition poster of Polish artists F. Wygzywalski, Y. Mehoffer, J. Bukowski, and T. Aksentowicz were determined. Visualization techniques were analyzed, taking into account the specifics of the poster and general stylistic trends in the art of those years. Considerable attention was paid to highlighting the regional features of poster design in the specified countries, as well as the features of the authors’ individual style within these regional models. Conclusions. In the general cultural and historical context of the time, the exhibition poster was an important component of the formation of national trends in the artistic style of the time, primarily floreal, linear, national-romantic. Reflecting the stylistic guidelines of the time, the exhibition poster, aimed at a wide audience, contributed to the formation of a holistic artistic vision as a manifestation of the cultural and artistic guidelines of the specified period.

A Study on the Characteristics and Satisfaction of Media Art Exhibitions

This study examined the characteristics used in media art and their effect on viewing satisfaction. Therefore, a survey was conducted on 197 visitors who visited at least one of the following: bunker of light in Jeju Island, the manipulation angle of time at the Nature Labs Museum, and the media art exhibition at the Arte Museum. As a result of analysis through the multiple linear regression analysis model, it was found that the influence of satisfaction was significant in the media art characteristics such as replace, interactivity, and sensory stimulation. The results of this study provide theoretical and practical implications in that they empirically examine the effects of media art characteristics on viewing satisfaction.

Aesthetic experience enhances first-person spatial representation

Episodic autobiographical memories are characterized by a spatial context and an affective component. But how do affective and spatial aspects interact? Does affect modulate the way we encode the spatial context of events? We investigated how one element of affect, namely aesthetic liking, modulates memory for location, in three online experiments (n = 124, 79, and 80). Participants visited a professionally curated virtual art exhibition. They then relocated previously viewed artworks on the museum map and reported how much they liked them. Across all experiments, liking an artwork was associated with increased ability to recall the wall on which it was hung. The effect was not explained by viewing time and appeared to modulate recognition speed. The liking-wall memory effect remained when participants attended to abstractness, rather than liking, and when testing occurred 24 h after the museum visit. Liking also modulated memory for the room where a work of art was hung, but this effect primarily involved reduced room memory for disliked artworks. Further, the liking-wall memory effect remained after controlling for effects of room memory. Recalling the wall requires recalling one's facing direction, so our findings suggest that positive aesthetic experiences enhance first-person spatial representations. More generally, a first-person component of positive affect transfers to wider spatial representation and facilitates the encoding of locations in a subject-centered reference frame. Affect and spatial representations are therefore important, and linked, elements of sentience and subjectivity. Memories of aesthetic experiences are also spatial memories of how we encountered a work of art. This linkage may have implications for museum design.

Processes of Our Mediated Spaces

Through art examples, I would like to show how real exhibiting space enters the dialogue with the visitor and his movement while using Virtual Reality and Artificial Intelligence. The analysis of the technological aspect is important, as well as the recognition of social and material conditions in the creation of new artistic practices, the production and later recognition of what happens to art. I would move within the paradigm shift of image, photography, film, installation, and Internet use, as well as within the emergence of artificial intelligence. The audience is seen as a participant in the creation and evaluation of artistic experience, they are invited to reveal their action views. Today, the exchange of experiences as well as the study of common experience in the context of artistic research is made easier through art systems. Artists incorporate evaluation into their practice, thus, establishing a new program of research in art and technology. The interactive experience in the digital age explores different ways of creating and evaluating interactive art. While the visitor of contemporary art exhibitions explores and examines what is happening, how fast contemporary art is changing, (s)he still does not understand what is happening in front of her/him. Various art examples presented in this paper show a new phenomenon that places science, technology, and art on the same side. This opens a new chapter in artistic practice and makes the contemporary scene livelier and more diverse. At this point, we come to the possible sequence of events in art, which brings a new way of expression and provides an interesting space for further research. Article received: May 20, 2022; Article accepted: July 15, 2022; Published online: October 15, 2022; Original scholarly paper

The Intersection of Digital and Spatial Immersion: Architecture of Pavilions at Expo Dubai 2020

Expo Dubai 2020 is clear evidence of a 21st-century radical switch regarding the reception of art exhibitions. As Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, and Artificial Intelligence technologies have already developed enough to show significant influences on art, the following topic considers the merging of architecture and digital art, which are building immersive experiences together. The aim of this paper is to establish the level of inseparability and the type of connection between spatial and digital aspects that cooperatively stimulate and define the movement of visitors. As the creative capacity of architecture and digital art is unlimited in production, three country pavilions, Brazilian, South Korean, and Italian at Expo Dubai 2020, with distinct concepts are analyzed. Selected pavilions were showing diverse approaches to the application of digital technologies within the space, which makes new possible categories to be explored. A strongly emphasized multisensory aspect of spatial experience can be discovered through simple architectural technology in the Brazilian pavilion combined with the symbolic element of water, sounds, and vapors together with digital projections. Symbiosis of digital and architectural components of space is reached in the Italian pavilion by the double shifting of both digital and physical parts of the rope façade. The apparent combination of digital and analog surfaces on the kinetic facade in the Korean pavilion completes the basis for discussion about methods of hybridization of architecture and digital art. Although architecture is, according to Peter Sloterdijk, the original form of immersion, the selected pavilions demonstrate that participants of the state-of-the-art symbiosis of architecture and digital art can experience new types of immersive reception, simultaneously showcasing the application of the concept of mimesis. Article received: May 12, 2022; Article accepted: July 15, 2022; Published online: October 15, 2022; Original scholarly paper

An Online Art Project Based on the Affirmative Model of Disability in Japan

AbstractIn recent years, disability has become a site for knowledge and artistic creation. In this study, local governments, universities, art museums and non‐profit organisations collaborated from 2019 to 2022 to implement an online art project for people with disabilities during the Covid‐19 era. The project's goal was to enhance the identity of people with disabilities, promote their interest in museums and artwork as local resources and engage them in society. The project was conducted in three phases with a sequence of connections using the affirmative model of disability by Swain and French (2000) as the theoretical framework. In Phase 1, we surveyed 370 people with disabilities and their supporters living in Hiroshima Prefecture to clarify the conditions promoting or hindering their appreciation of art exhibitions and the use of digital devices. In Phase 2, we conducted an online interactive appreciation workshop at a museum for seven people with disabilities based on the Phase 1 survey results. In Phase 3, an online exhibition was held using the artwork seen in Phase 2, and words and photographs were used as methods of expression. The interactive appreciation workshop and exhibition was built to provide the participants a safe and comfortable online alternative space, which led to individual empowerment and enhanced collaboration in the disability community. This study advocates the value of coexisting and co‐prosperous inclusion rather than inclusion that necessitates people gathering in the same place.

Museums in the COVID-19 pandemic: the impact of economic stimulus policy and market strategy of the national palace museums in Taiwan

ABSTRACT This research examines the impact of the voucher-based economic stimulus policy and market strategy on museum traffic during the COVID-19 pandemic in Taiwan. We apply a univariate time-series model (ARMAX) to daily-visit data of the National Palace Museums in Taiwan during 2016–2021, showing results that the consumption voucher program effectively did boost the number of visitors amid overall declines in tourists due to the lockdown. A comparison among the National Palace Museum branches further reveals that holding more outdoor art events by one branch induced a more potent effect of the stimulus policy. The findings suggest that outdoor art events can be a helpful strategy for museums, which traditionally rely on indoor art exhibitions, to mitigate the impact of a pandemic.

The Kusama Retrospective and the Future of The Tel Aviv Museum of Art

Abstract Following two years of heavy COVID restrictions, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art opened the “first-ever retrospective in Israel” of the Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama. Beyond the pioneering artist that is the subject of the retrospective and what it says about the Israeli public that is drawn to her work, the exhibition also invites analysis into the restaging of art exhibitions originating in another country, in this case a German museum, with all the implications that such a venture raises in Israel. In breaking down the curatorial modus operandi of restaging a borrowed exhibition designed by the Gropius Bau Museum in Berlin in Tel Aviv, this paper explores the museological craft of restaging exhibitions. In its original conception, the Gropius Bau focused on Kusama’s art “from a European and particularly from a German perspective,” highlighting Kusama’s “influence” on the European art scene during the time she spent in Germany in the late 1960s. The Tel Aviv Museum made significant changes to this scholarly conceptual core, perhaps sensitive to any claim that positioned Berlin as a cosmopolitan city after the Holocaust, by opting for an “affective” visitor experience. The site-specific textuality of this endeavor foregrounds the Tel Aviv Museum’s performance of itself in its twin roles in the nation’s history and its internationalization of the country’s cultural capital. I suggest that the Kusama exhibition reflects a new direction for the broader practices of art curatorship in the oldest art museum in the country.

Safeguarding Malay’s Folktale Through Interactive Online Art Exhibition

: Folktale is the oral tradition passed down from various generations through storytelling, writing, performing and visual presentation. It represents the culture and identity of a society. People in Malaysia recognize the value of folktales to convey messages in reprimands, advice, and satire. However, folktales are increasingly forgotten by today's generation. This descriptive study is based on ‘Sang Kancil’, a classic literary manuscript by Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka in 2015. This study focused on ‘The Mousedeer Counting Crocodiles’ tale in the form of drawings. These were presented in the online art exhibition using the Artsteps application. The development of the online art exhibition was referred to Graham Wallas' Model of the Four Stages of Creativity which are (i) Preparation, (ii). Incubation, (iii) Illumination, and (iv) Verification. The use of the online art exhibition is a way to promote folktales using technology to entice the current generation towards the age-old heritage.

Dogma Film and Ceramic art: The Case of ‘Blue Collar – White Collar’

In this project, Dogma film and ceramic art were developed into interdependent art objects, exhibitions, and short films. The art project Blue Collar – White Collar started with the artists’ interest in the global concern about the fourth industrial revolution, often referred to as ‘the rise of the robots’, where old professions seem to disappear, and central tasks are robotised. However, there seems to be signs of a new role for the skills of handicraft in society. The short film Rhythm of the Hands documented parts of this development through the artists’ reflections on the role of their contemporary ceramic practice. The materialised results of ceramic art and Dogma film explain in a complementary way the development of the new roles of craft in society and of Dogma used as production principle in a craft context. Through an intersubjective documentation of insiders’ perspectives in a collaborative art project the case shows a basic understanding of being an artist where a diversity of art practices can expand into new fields in continuously new ways. This can contribute to new ways of co-creation and collaboration in working life. Keywords: creativity, Dogma film, ceramic art, artistic research, New European Bauhaus, Craft Hub

Spaces of Experimentation and Collaboration in Early 1990s Malaysian Art

Abstract: At the zenith of the Mahathir era, amidst the economic boom and rapid development of the early 1990s, Malaysian art exhibitions were charting a novel path in the arena of installation and performance art. This paper will closely examine three seminal installation art exhibitions, namely Sook Ching (1990), 2 Installations (1991), and Warbox Lalang Killing Tools (1994), where some of the artists involved chose to perform and/or collaborate with dancers and theatre makers, culminating in some of the earliest experiments with performance art in Malaysia. What sets them apart from other installation exhibitions of that period is their use of performance as a tool to confront, unsettle, and challenge audiences in institutional spaces, thereby opening up new possibilities for experimentation and risk-taking.

Revisiting documenta 14’s magazine South as a State of Mind: On ‘Southerness’ in contemporary art and theory

The fourteenth edition of documenta, the international exhibition of contemporary art, introduced in the cultural field of Greece a strong statement about the country being part of the Global South. Traditionally, documenta takes place every five years in the German city of Kassel. Yet the fourteenth iteration in 2017, titled ‘Learning from Athens’, was equally split between Kassel and Athens. As documenta is considered the world’s most important manifestation of contemporary art, already for more than two decades its artistic directors try to make the exhibition project globally relevant. As every edition, so also the fourteenth, was accompanied by several publications that constructed a rich theoretical framework. Four years after the exhibition project’s finissage, this article revisits the magazine of documenta 14, titled South as a State of Mind, in order to reflect on the conception of the terms ‘South’ and ‘Global South’ proposed there in relation to the situated Athens-based perspective. As the documenta 14 motto reassured, this was an exercise in ‘learning from Athens’ between 2013 and 2017: how productive did this perspective render conceptualizations of the South for the past, present or future? And what role did the intense context of the 2010s in Greece play in such conceptualizations, in the midst of the country’s sovereign debt crisis, waves of refugees and social and political turmoil?

Review: Form and Feeling: The Making of Concretism in Brazil, edited by Antonio Sergio Bessa

Review: <i>Form and Feeling: The Making of Concretism in Brazil</i>, edited by Antonio Sergio Bessa

Naomi Noble Richard

Naomi Noble Richard

Notes from the Community: Centro Cultural Aztlán

Centro Cultural Aztlán is a Chicano/Latino cultural arts center founded in 1977 in San Antonio, Texas. As part of the organization’s work to present Chicano/Latino artists, Centro’s staff members and arts curators have conducted interviews with several community-based artists in San Antonio and South Texas. While the organization does not have a formal archive of oral histories, it does boast an extensive video library that includes interviews with artists and recordings of performances, visual arts exhibitions, community arts workshops, and more. The organization welcomes researchers to visit their YouTube channel, which features a selection of artist interviews and event recordings. The organization is also open to partnerships with oral historians to document the stories of the 350 artists actively engaged with the organization each year.