Biennale is a Preacher for the Globalization of Art?

과연 비엔날레는 세계화의 전도사인가?

  • Published : 2005.12.31

Abstract

As biennale exhibitions has been expanded into all of the world since 1990s, these trends of blockbuster exhibitions have caused several problems. For instance, some major curators monopolized most global size exhibitions despite of a variety of cultural and historical backgrounds. Besides, due to a strong connection between these curators and their own artists, the young emerging artists' opportunities tend to be reduced as a result of the power game. In addition, major curators' power have influence on the exhibition style as well as on the theme itself. Some artists who did not involved that kind of huge scale exhibitions dispute that the direction of the exhibition is concentrating on the curator's interest instead of artists or viewers. Although these dissatisfactions could not portray correctly the process of organizing and managing system of a biennale exhibition, those biennale exhibitions held in recent have shown tautologic discourses without any passion and positive attitude direct to the exploitation of our society as a vanguard. In the process of comparing several kinds of biennale exhibitions, I could find that some artists who participated several biennale exhibitions at the same time did not present their creative vision, although the triumph of an exhibition was typically measured by the amount of visitors. Thus, the aim of this article is to prove that the biennale can show us new cultural discourse as well as progressive method of understanding our times. Is biennale producing the real 'global standard'? If biennale has done it, could this global standard present upto-date paradigm for the unique exhibition system? Is biennale providing an useful opportunity for the understanding and communicating of contemporary art through the recontextualization which is pronounced by the publicity of curator and organizing committee? How can we find the distinctive strategy from each biennale exhibition including Venice Biennale? Biennale, as a blockbuster exhibition, always requires a degree of hype, otherwise it would not be a special event and would not attract a big enough audience. It is the actual reason why major biennale exhibitions seem to be similar artistic events. Unfortunately, it seems that the excess of biennale exhibitions might bring about the lack of contents. In this case, the biennale syndrome would being a kind of the center of poverty, in spite of the visual splendor. After all, following the global standard may not be a matter of great importance now. What really matters is how each biennale exhibition which started under the different conditions can search their own identity.

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