THE STATE OF THE ART

Denis Rodriguez e Leonardo Remor

2014 – 2018

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The State of the Art is an open-ended project, in collaboration with Denis Rodriguez, which consists of a collection of photographs of commercial establishments using the word “art” [arte] in their signs.

A Brazilian baker from Belém, a city situated in Para’s Amazonian estuary, names his bakery Bread With Art. What do small-business owners seek with the word “art” on their shop signs? Is it merely the classical commodity fetishism of the goods sold? Is it to justify raising prices to cover high storefront rental costs and overhead? Is it because art is gourmet?

“Value is never based on the inherent property of objects, but on the subject’s judgment of them,” explains Georg Simmel in The Philosophy of Money from 1907. The art system understands this capitalist logic: the value of an object surpasses its economic and exchange value. A symbolic value is attributed to the art object and its creator and equally so to its consumers: the art collector and institutions.

The work gives clues as to the place of art for those outside the field and helps us reflect on the idea of distinction and value – of use, of exchange, and also aesthetic – and of the perennial illusion of luxury still associated with art. Today, the notion of artwork is insufficient for a reflection on contemporary artistic productions, that are increasingly aimed at open processes and experimentations… the object produced for elitist and disinterested buyers is finally giving way to the volatile and ephemeral aesthetics of participatory and distributive practices.