Art World

Artworld
Feinkost Gallery, Berlin, November 25, 2007 to January 10, 2008

Ad Reinhardt, Alan Phelan, Balthasar Burkhard, Ben Gavin, Charles Gute, Christian Jankowski, IRWIN, Luchezar Boyadjiev, Matthieu Laurette, Pablo Helguera, Rainer Ganahl, REP Group, SOSka Group, et al.



“This has been our best and most successful auction ever!” This statement has become a generic catchphrase for punctuating every auction of contemporary art in New York or London; each auction house boasting comparative and competitive results. But is the commonly used term “fair market value” an accurate way to describe an unregulated market? In recent years the widespread recognition of contemporary art’s potential commercial value has pervaded public consciousness and led to unprecedented investment propelling the art market. As critics have pointed out, relative value no longer applies as Giacometti sells for a bargain when compared to Damien Hirst. What this then means in terms of how and who art history will be written by is really nothing new for how it has always been written: upper echelons of society with expendable capital have been the oil in the creative industry’s machine for centuries. Today, however, the general population in cities like London, New York or Berlin is tuned into the trends, trivia and tribulations that orbit the Art World. No longer is this exclusively a specialist’s game where interpretation is necessary to decipher cultural production. But the process by which the institutionally approved object arrives—the packaging it arrives in, who delivers it and why—remains one of the unexplained socio-cultural phenomena today.

01.01.2008