A traditional view of an artwork is that it's an easily commodified physical object. This object can then be displayed for its consumption and this display can in turn be done publicly in an exhibition. The exhibition is then the primary way for a larger public to engage with an artwork.
Indeed, we see that exhibitions are the most important aspect of an artist's professional life, even more so than creating artworks. This sentiment is reflected in the enduring popularity of texts like Boris Groys' The Politics of Installation, which was published fifteen years ago. Despite it being drivel about the 'sovereign character of artistic freedom', it is still regularly referred to today.
I've always strongly disagreed with the notion that the practice of exhibiting is a necessary condition for an artwork to exist, or function, and in the last few months I've thought about this issue in relation to some works I'm presently making.
In those works I feel like I'm presented with a problem of easily tradable objects that are nevertheless unsuitable for public exhibition.
I'm still very much in the process of figuring out such a seeming impossibility, as there are, quite naturally, very few examples of artworks that fit this description. The closest example I can think of is something like the works of Franz Erhard Walther, whose works require 'activation' by an audience. Yet this activation is pre-determined and nevertheless anticipates public exhibition of the works. So while there are some specific conditions for showing such a work, if those conditions are met, public exhibition is still very much an option without being detrimental to the work.
In my ruminations on the subject, I have noticed that public exhibition becomes difficult when multiple (physical) aspects of a work need to be simultaneously considered but aren't simultaneously available to a spectator. An example would be a situation where you have text that spans both sides of a piece of paper, while only one side is visible.
This example of course has a easy solution in the form of a double sided frame. So please note that general problems of adequately displaying certain works are not what I'm concerned with here. I'm reminded of this atrocity of a display mechanism that was created for a print by Sigmar Polke:
The print was made on semi-transparent paper and presumably this set up was created to highlight this translucency. Although there is some difficulty in showing this property of the work, the difficulty would exist even if you could directly handle the work with your own hands. These kinds of obstacles are trivial and uninteresting, and are usually the result of an artist not considering how others can engage with their work.
No, the problem I'm thinking of is the kind where an object can be readily consumed and freely traded in the private sphere, but accurate communication of its core properties breaks down in a public setting due to the nature of those properties.
I have made some works where I believe something of the sort is going on and I would love to provide you with some documentation of them. Yet it's both fitting and ironic, as well as a minor proof of their inability to be publicly displayed, that I feel like I've been unable to photograph them in any way that captures this internal dichotomy.
Addition on 30/11/2024:
In the last month I've thought about this more and there are two artists who might relate to this concept further.
The first is Duchamp, who especially with his various boxes has created a number of objects whose status remains somewhat inscrutable. Those works are best suited for a private viewing where a single person goes through the work, like one would read a book. They carefully study page after page, and after a while the whole of the work is known to the observer. This is best done by handling the objects yourself, but it's simultaneously not impossible to show the work in full in a vitrine. It's more cumbersome to completely grasp the extent of the work if displayed in a more public way, but it remains accessible nonetheless.
Another aspect to note is that many of those works were made in large editions, which is commonly interpreted as undermining the importance of the original in art. This however ignores the fact that most of those works had a 'deluxe' edition, which included some kind of, even more, hand-crafted original object that was unique to that particular exemplar of the deluxe edition. Such an inclusion in an edition blurs the lines between what can be considered a 'unique' object, as this definition will shift depending on what you do or don't include in the artwork.
I'm also thinking of what is known as Eva Hesse's 'studiowork'. Those oddly shaped pieces of latex, wax, wire mesh and cheesecloth are perhaps best shown on a desk or some other kind of work area, like they were in Hesse's dwellings:
There the 'test pieces' appear at home and their position is immediately understandable. They have however since been shown at museums and galleries, where they appear more strange and out of place:
It's not that these works seize to function on a white plinth, but there is a definitive shift in how we are able to perceive them. Having known these works for more than a decade now, I'm however unable to talk about this change in perception in precise terms.
