An art fair is not just a pure and simple market, but involves much more. In fact, there are many confluences between an art fair and an art biennial. As an example, in 2007, four major events took place in Europe: the Skulptur Projekte M\u00fcnster, Documenta, the Venice Biennale and Art Basel. June began with the Basel art fair, followed by the openings of the other events within a two-week period. The successive visits to Basel and Documenta revealed the ambiguity of the attributions and functions of both events. While the Unlimited section of Art Basel exhibited risky installations, Documenta presented works that could easily have been incorporated into the stand of any fair.<\/p>\n
Fairs play an important role in the current art scene, but not all fairs are Art Basel or Frieze. A fair is a time for professionals to meet, to gauge the market and to present galleries. The dynamics of the art world have changed radically, from artistic practices to the way of presenting, communicating, distributing, collecting and, of course, marketing. The role of fairs has become much more complex. And to this we must add their proliferation. Competition is fierce.<\/p>\n
The fairs that work are those with a long history and a significant specific weight, such as the aforementioned Art Basel or those of more recent creation that have known how to define their specificity and positioning, such as Frieze. Others have reinvented themselves, such as Artissima. Needless to say, they correspond to contexts that have a consolidated artistic and cultural fabric.<\/p>\n
There is no doubt that the ARCO model had become obsolete, and the huge empty corridors of a year ago portrayed it perfectly: a monumental structure (but without the museum weight of Basel), a lax selection of participating galleries, discrete curated programmes and a financial balance that was balanced by institutional purchases that were formalised during the days of the fair… Carlos Urroz, its new director, declared as soon as he was appointed that the first thing he was going to do was reduce space and the number of participants.<\/p>\n
Dynamism, new ideas, better communication, agility, fluidity of visitors and professionals, meetings, forums. But everything in its proper measure. The large scale is no longer enough, nor are the majority audiences. A fair can be the ideal place or should contribute to creating the ideal situation for buying, for taking the pulse of current art, for discovering, for confirming, for gathering elements for reflection, for meeting, for seeing, for being seen, for debating, for going out and, last but not least, for becoming an unmissable event that takes us annually to a particular city, to revisit it and enjoy its cultural and leisure offering.<\/p>\n
[Article published in Bonart, 2011]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
An art fair is not just a pure and simple market, but involves much more. In fact, there are many confluences between an art fair and an art biennial. As an example, in 2007, four major events took place in Europe: the Skulptur Projekte M\u00fcnster, Documenta, the Venice Biennale and Art Basel. June began with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1077","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-textos-en"],"yoast_head":"\n