Nuno Crespo

Nuno Crespo, in ípsilon, the best 2014

In 2014, there was an insistence on anthological exhibition and a shift of attention in the works for attention on the artist.

Arguably the many levels and this year will be marked by the end of BES and for any consequences that end. In the visual arts the bank's failure brought the end of Avenue 211, one studios and exhibition space with outstanding quality, diversity and where they could watch the remarkable exhibition that hardly find another context to develop.

What prevails is the crisis and in this scenario the question that more recurrently all ask is: how long? And this is not only a question for the recovery of health and dynamism of the art market, but essentially a question by another institutional context in which works, authors and public can relate to a freer way, diverse and risky. And one of the expressions of this lack of risk is the lack of group exhibitions, research, where monographic attention on the authors gives way to the construction of a thought to and from unique works of art.

There are known exceptions in other geographies of art and the world are brought to debate, but in general we are witnessing a shift of attention in the works for attention on the artist and an insistence on anthological exhibition, in affirming the authority of an author, in confirmation of a route.

This is not to diminish the individual authors and the key role that some of them have to get through their works, brighten any time and a generation together with his afflictions and transformations, but it is to note the domain of a typology expository and draw consequences. This is a situation to which all contribute - newspapers and their idea of information, criticism, the directions of museums and art centers and the predominance of the statistical analyzes, their obsession with the public as the main criterion of cultural management and programming etc. - And where predominates the prejudice of success: the exhibition spaces are now places of the success stories of where they are absent experimentation, research, exploratory projects and the risk associated with them.

The first consequence of this transformation is that the art exhibition are today mainly reflects the market dynamics and not expression of the uniqueness of artistic proposals, nor does it materialize lines of thinking about reality, which is questioned, investigates and attempts to change . And often driven by strong financial constraint, it is the market that enables exhibitions, are their agents that through generous sponsorships allow and enable exhibitions, catalogs pay, offer works in return for the promotion and enhancement of certain set of artists. And the exhibits that require more research, more time, greater risks are placed second and forgotten. It is the predominance of the successful artist (where the success criteria are many and varied) and the absence of exposures to think our present condition, i.e. exhibits that without security and without the guarantees of art history, of its established events and away from the main protagonists to risk thinking the paradoxes of everyday life.

In an important text Alison Gingeras, known historian of American art, said a major art magazine, ArtForum, about an artist: as far as thinking about his works, they are immune to all that they say about, because the person who through the mythology about him forged and succeeded, managed to make his works indifferent to any dispute and thereby ensure the history of Olympus a prominent place for all his work. The text of Gingeras is about Jeff Koons, but it serves here as an illustration and symptom of displacement of the attention we have been describing in which the authors put under his shadow his work and thus the eclipse.