Industrial tarpaulins, wood, red floor marking tape. MANIFESTS EXCHANGE (visually) returns to the fundamental concepts of the opening exhibition MANIFESTS. The space accommodates 14 artistic positions by artists and collectives working in Switzerland and Japan in specially demarcated fields. After ENTERPRISE took temporary refuge in the off-space Syndicate with MANIFESTS, it is now the premises of the √K Contemporary gallery in the heart of Tokyo where the works temporarily remain in a place marked out for them. The art works await sale and onward transportation away from the exhibitions, that is re-imagined in the exhibition setting. Unlike a white cube setting, which allows for undisturbed contemplation of the works, which are intended to stand on their own, detached from social references, the intervention is reminiscent of the reality of a global art market for which works, gallerists and artists travel around the world. When the gallery space becomes a depot, the transitory dimension, which is particularly characteristic of contemporary art, comes into focus. The luxury goods of art appears here above all in its logistical challenges.
The staged storage situation reminds us that the exhibition is always merely a momentary pause, a state of suspension followed by dismantling and the next installation, whereby this cycle is repeated until a buyer is found who removes the works from the cycle – at least for the moment. The instability of the exhibition situation, the supposed look behind the scenes into the storage room, which is normally carefully shielded from public view, contrasts with the usual forms of art presentation. It becomes clear that the classic exhibition situation is ultimately an artificially created vacuum that thrives on the fact that all traces of the work that led to the presentation of the artwork are removed and that the circulation of artworks, the paths they have taken and will soon take again, are hidden. The form of presentation chosen here makes it clear that artworks, like any other commodity, are part of a global trade and transportation network. If the logistical reality of the exhibition business is negated on the visual level in the tidy white cube, this also perpetuates an understanding of art that stylises works of art as detached from pragmatic world references or locates the references only on the content level.
In contrast, the exhibition addresses its own transience and ephemerality as well as the framework conditions that characterise the contemporary art market in particular. Materials such as industrial tarpaulins, which are familiar from the construction and transportation industries, are placed in such a way that they divide the gallery into different zones and function as an independent artistic element, as it were, when they immerse the space in a fascinating play of light and shadow. This artistic adaptation of structures that are geared towards functionality, towards the smooth and rapid handling of goods whose storage would incur unnecessary costs, is set here in contrast to the dominant notions of art as a value in itself. This value peculiar to art is repeatedly defined as a moment that is independent of economic interests or can only be quantified to a limited extent by them. This also means that the work of artists, the time they invest, is staged less as work than as a performance whose value cannot be monetised. An idea of art and art production as following its own logic, which is also fatally used to legitimise precarious working conditions in the art field. In contrast, the concept of the exhibition reminds us that art production is permeated by economic references. While exhibitions traditionally serve to make us forget such worldly references and to place content and the enjoyment of art in the foreground, the exhibition returns to the work and effort that underpin the art business.
Text: Elsa Himmer