Centre for Contemporary Culture at Palazzo Strozzi

Palazzo Strozzi

From 14 November 2008 to 11 January 2009 the CCCS presented the exhibition ART, PRICE AND VALUE – Contemporary Art and the Market, curated by the author Piroschka Dossi and Franziska Nori, project director of the CCCS.

The exhibition scrutinised the increased links between contemporary art and the international market. The power now exerted by the economy on political, social and cultural life has extended its hold on art production so that the whole system is undergoing a complete transformation in response to the demands of an increasingly global market. Contemporary art plays an ever more prominent role in our culture. Its economic power is reflected in the exorbitant prices now reached at international auctions and in the increased popularity of exhibitions, biennales, festivals, shows and mega-happenings.

In the last twenty years contemporary art has become a specialised industry with its own rules and a network of professional operators. Artists are drawn into the international dynamics of a highly competitive system. This places them in competition with artists from widely different backgrounds but demands they speak a global and commercial language.

There has been a drastic change in the rules: witness the impact of the emergence of contemporary Chinese art on the market. In recent years with the growing interest of collectors, galleries and institutions in the west it has become the ideal environment for speculators.

With pressing demands for the new and sensational the process of production and commercialization is speeded up but art is also increasingly drawn into mass culture and commerce.

The exhibition featured the work of contemporary artists which throws light on the mechanisms of the international art system. The selection explored different points of view, ranging from complete conformity to the prevailing rules of the market, to irony and sarcasm and even to an “anti-market” stance, taken by those anxious to avoid the commercial aspects of the art market entirely.

http://www.strozzina.org/artpriceandvalue/index.html

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