ARCO 2013 Review: Does “CO” Stand For Contemporary or Commercial ?
This weekend we visited ARCO, Madrid’s annual International Contemporary Art, and here I bring you my fresh impressions.
Arco is an event of long history (now into its 32nd year) and impressive statistics: this year 2000 artists were presented by 201 galleries from 27 countries, and its history and grand scale set very high expectations. During the 4 days, two huge pavilions were adopted into a meta-museum, a labyrinth of solemn white walls packed with thousands of colorful works of art.
However, while these large numbers testify to grand ambition of event organizers, they don’t do justice to artists and visitors, as exhibited pieces lack the proper space and time to be properly enjoyed. There is no doubt that seeing this large body of work would bring us more joy and inspiration if we have seen it over the course of entire year, one gallery at a time, instead packing everything into one full-day visit. Art takes time to create, but also takes time and space to consume. Events like Arco, in order to maximize profits, unfortunately tend to compress this experience until the point where all pieces of art blur into one indistiguishable mass of colors and shapes.
What greatly adds to this perception problem is that fact that, unlike museums, it was not possible to properly curate the exhibition as a whole and group together work according to common themes, media, or any other criteria, as the layout of the floor plan was dictated merely by the purchasing power of participating galleries.
But much greater disappointment comes from tragic lack of diversity and innovation. Contraversial subjects, new technologies, video art, performance, installation art - these are all almost completely absent from this year’s Arco, creating an absurd situation that the most vital part of today’s art production is not represented by the exhibition that claims to be about “contemporary art”. In fact, all that this year’s visitors could see were paintings, prints and wall-mounted plastic pieces that wouldn’t look out of place or new even if they were exhibited 50 years ago, and there is an obvious reason for that: the intention of Arco is no longer to offer a glimpse into contemporary art scene, but to cater to very specific taste of its target market: rich clients belonging to reactionary establishment. And what this target market wants are nice decorative pieces that can be purchased by dozens and hung in corporate hallways and conference rooms.
Somewhere along these 32 years, Arco seems to have lost “Contemporary” from its name, and instead of “Arte Contemporaneo” has become all about “Arte Commercial”. Luckily for the real lovers of art, this doesn’t mean that people stopped innovating and moving the art forward into new millenium: it simply means that Arco as an event has become completely irrelevant. We no longer need big fairs and expensive tickets, when great art is literary just one mouse-click away or better yet, the best of art is often hidden in the cracks of the facades just around the corner.
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