Will the artist-as-a-researcher save contemporary art galleries’ analog future?

Critical discourse about the artist as researcher has been around in Europe at least since the implementation of Bologna process in universities and the legitimation of the PhD in the arts. The heated debate among artists and scholars has witness the struggle to define what artistic research might mean nowadays, especially in relation to the more established concept of scientific research. For example, using philosophical terms borrowed from Kant and Arendt, Janneke Wesseling describes research carried out by artists as the one prompted by thirst for meaning (or trying to answer questions we know have no answers) as opposed to the one done by scientists: those who, using intellect, look for correctness (See it Again, Say it Again: The Artist as Researcher, 2012). However, what we are especially focused on in this article is not the nature of artistic research but rather the hard-to-define quality of some artists that specifically base their making on research or, in other words, those who might fall in the blurry category of research-based artists.

Pinning down clear characteristics of the research-based art practice as opposed to any other art practice is a difficult task and yet, since we feel this concept can be fruitful for the critical discourse expressed in this article, we would like to propose a description that involves institutional conventions and borrows the older concept of academic research. Therefore, taking into consideration the process, perhaps basing an artistic practice on research means for the artist to use topics and methods typical of academic research, spanning different academic disciplines such as sciences, social studies, ethnography, art history, etc. We could go as far as saying that normally in this type of art practices, the intellectual effort of linguistically formulating a topic of enquire and a study method comes before any art making. Only eventually this process arrives to the point where research is translated into finished pieces that are made public (a painting, a video, a sculpture, a performance, etc.).

Following this definition of research-based artistic practice, the fact that physical research-based artworks might result appealing for their decorative qualities seems to be coincidental. Besides, looking at these objects simply for their visual value and considering the research that led to them as a forgettable accessory would probably mean to be missing their point and the knowledge they might represent. Therefore there appears to be no space for them to relate to the logic of a private contemporary art market naturally regulated by the fame of stars or the pure sense of aesthetic pleasure collectors might have for what they buy. And yet we found that research-based art is somehow present in the private market and indeed included in the circuit of commercial galleries. Keen to explore this other territory in the art business, we looked for a better view from the inside and interviewed two gallerists in Brussels that have decided to include research-based artists in their roster of representation: Gregory Thirion from D+T Project Gallery and Harlan Levey from Harlan Levey Projects Gallery.

What came most evidently after our chat is these gallerists’ role as agents for research-based artists (we think of the work of Zachary Formwalt, Nicoline Van Harskamp, Haseeb Amhed) in expanding their visibility within institutions, even when their practice would anyway survive on institutional support and representation. Besides, we noticed an interests by both the gallerists in an active intellectual dialogue with the artists that doesn’t end with business advice or promotional strategies but instead contributes to the cultural and intrinsic aspect of the artists’ research and work.

But most surprisingly, both Thirion and Levey confirmed that an important current of discreet and cultivated private collectors does exist, collectors looking for artworks with heavy cultural strength derived from the intellectual effort of which they are consequence. We heard about a sort of silent patronage by people willing to invest their finances in culture laden objects for the exceptional narrations of which these are symbol. We were stupefied to learn that the same personalities could spend two years investigating into an artwork before finally deciding to buy it.

A strangely long time when compared with what we might call the Internet pace of the mainstream contemporary art market. A very reasonable time when we think about the naturally lengthy making of art stemming from academic research.

It is with this complex opposition in mind that, since our chats with Thirion and Levey, we have been wondering about the future of contemporary art galleries in the age of the Internet. We have realised that what seems strange nowadays about some big and famous art galleries is to see them acting as heavy machines in the form of traditional white cubes, trying to keep the fast pace of contemporary art Internet-trading without proposing no other knowledge, expertise, aesthetic than those that can be grasped online.

Especially now that state funding to culture is being cut and no other system but privatisation seems to be on its way, should we ask contemporary art galleries to follow a different strategy that takes into consideration an ‘offline pace’ of both art making and art experiencing? Can galleries assume the role of knowledge producers and survive a digital revolution only by basing themselves on a more institutional model? And ultimately, taking the role of The Sceptic as beautifully described by artists Lonnie van Brummelen and Sieber de Haan in one of their essays on artistic research, while asking these questions and witnessing these changes, how wary should we all remain to avoid the problems a commodification of knowledge might bring?

November 25, 2020