This is not an art exhibition, even

With: Antonio Gagliano, Antonio Ortega, Benjamin Seror, Christian Jankowski, Fabienne Audeoud, Gabriel Pericàs, Joan Morey, João Onofre, Laia Estruch, Ryan Rivadeneyra and Tamara Kuselman.

Curated by David G. Torres

Interdisciplinarity is one of the most worn out expressions in contemporary art. It is used basically in reference to the multiplicity of media employed by artists: video, photography, installations, drawing, painting… And also the possibility of hybridisation with other disciplines: film, theatre, dance, writing… However, why is there so much talk of interdisciplinarity when art continues to be hemmed in by outmoded formats of presentation and distribution?

The exhibition appears as the privileged end result of practices whose temporality is ephemeral and that are developed in formats that don’t respond to the final work being laid out, exhibited and later kept with others. Obviously it is not a new question and the project “This is not an exhibition, even” doesn’t aim to analyse the exhibition as the final format for the presentation of works of art. In fact the “even” of this title is not just an ironic reference to the idea of the work as an unfinished process, as in Duchamp (the “meme” of “La mariée mise à nu par ses célibataires, même”), it is also winks at many recent proposals that have sought to question the exhibition and its alternatives (for example, the project “Alternativas a la exposición” by Beatriz Herraez at the CASM in 2005, the essay “Salir de la Exposición (si es que alguna vez habíamos entrado)” by Martí Manen published by Consonni or, more explicitly, the project, “Esto no es una exposición” by Carles Guerra in the Centro Huarte in 2008). It isn’t even an exhibition with a thesis, because this would insist in some way on the validity of a format that the project itself places in question: the exhibition and the possibility of establishing a discourse through a series of works. Besides the very idea of trying to develop a thesis would have something to do with the pre-modern desire of wanting to reach some form of conclusion. “This is not an exhibition, even” is a project of prospection that accommodates artistic practices whose formats are hybrid and imply different temporalities.

Beyond the explicit economic reasons for the current crisis there is a systemic crisis, one of the deep-seated reasons for which is the change of paradigm in the modes of distribution of knowledge and information. This change of paradigm in art implies, de facto, placing in practice the longed for, and much sought after since the seventies, dematerialisation of the work of art, to the extent that artists’ proposals exist in a multiplicity of supports and circulate in different formats. Or, to put it another way, it implies that the question of format becomes secondary, that what is being presented, offered or shown avoids formal classification, and is explained be it one way or another: video, book, installation, performance, lecture… In this displacement, there is precisely the reappearance of practices appropriated from the seventies, in another context of crisis, that speculated with new forms for the presentation of content through the presence of the artist, in particular in performance and its documentation in different registers.

“This is not an exhibition, even” presents the work of creators for whom the fundamental point is not the work, the final result or what is exhibited, so much as what is explained: for whom the what has become displaced definitively by the how. The key is to have something to explain, even if this something is made up of mere snippets, constructed out of the very impossibility of narration, recuperating techniques such as the cut-up of William Burroughs in a contemporary cut and paste. A fragmentary narrative in which references to art history and pop music (Benjamin Seror) are intermingled, a subjective review in which a personal trajectory interweaves with the history of modern design, (Gabriel Pericás), diverse events are brought together by an arbitrary historic event (Antonio Gagliano) or anecdotal facts (Ryan Rivadeneira) that generate a brief discussion (Tamara Kuselman), that take the form of a book, a talk, a performance, a video or a series of objects and drawings. Narrative or history and subjectivity or presence of the artist imply: on the one hand, a reconsideration of the work of the artist and the space he occupies (João Onofre), the artist’s role and capacity to provoke certain dysfunctions in the mass media infiltrating his work into the distribution of general information (Christian Jankowski) or questioning authorship and the artist’s desire for notoriety through his presence as an icon and producer of fetish objects (Antonio Ortega). And, on the other hand, the bringing up to date of performative practices implies the need to recuperate a space for experience in the context of contemporary art practices, be it by recurring to the concert or public event as a way of reconsidering the attributes of gender (Fabienne Audeoud), the recuperation of hybrid experiences somewhere between performance, dance and the theatre of the seventies in choreography (Laia Estruch) or evidencing the relations of power and submission between the public and the artist (Joan Morey).

“This is not an exhibition, even” endeavours to present some of the strategies of a few contemporary artists from distinct contexts who manifest a tendency to develop different narratives through the presence of the artist, performance or the performativity of the work. It is not an exhibition, nor does it show, so much as present, make present. In this making present the priority is once again the how, so many proposals follow different strategies of visibility, explaining the same in diverse ways: in performances or with objects; through experience or documentation. So that, “This is not an exhibition, even! is ultimately many things: an exhibition; a programme of performances; screenings of documents and videos; a publication/poster; a web…