Art without theory suffers! Even at Frieze New York 2014

 

Frieze New York will open in a few hours but, according to the new trend, some of the works that are going to be presented are already available online on the fair’s website. We have spotted two works by Wyatt Kahn at T293, a beautiful work by Julia Rommel at Bureau, and a curious picture by Danh Vo that could be linked to the installation presented by the artist at the last Biennale di Venezia… but this latter is just an hypothesis.

 

There is however a problem with this new trend of publishing the works on sale on a certain platform – other fairs have chosen artsy.net for that matter – that is the lack of information. The only chance for the user to find out more about the piece is to write to the gallery; but it takes time, both for the user himself and for the gallery.

 

Since the idea of abstraction was linked to a specific kind of art, the text, or a text, has been fundamental in the understanding of artworks. In the era we are living most of the time artworks are a synthesis of clusters of ideas that are generated directly by the artist. These clusters are the “metaphysics” of the work, and they can be communicated in many ways. They can be written, by the artist himself, or by a critic – rarely a curator can do it – or they can also be found in the work of another artist, or novelist, or physician. But a text conveying the related information is always needed, as being an essential part of the artwork.

September 22, 2014