Fairs and Biennials as Obstacles to Art's True Potential

Christian Caliandro argues that contemporary art's institutional system—fairs, biennials, major exhibitions—has become a rusty, jammed machine that prevents artworks from fulfilling their real functions, reducing them to decoration or financial investment. He traces this to the system's alignment with privileged classes, where art serves the rich and adopts a rhetoric of social concern while being fundamentally conservative. Drawing on documenta15 as an example, he contends that the core issue now lies not in the artworks themselves but in the dispositifs that frame them. Caliandro contrasts this with a progressive, evolving art that deliberately ignores the system and builds alternative dimensions for art experience, bypassing established paradigms like the clear separation between artwork and space, art and reality, spectacle and audience. He also reflects on Arte Povera's legacy, noting that its linguistic revolution was eventually absorbed by the market, neutralizing its utopian aspirations. The article references Candice Breitz's critique of 'poverty pornography' at the festivalfilosofia in Modena, and Gianluigi Simonetti's observation about the centrality of marginality in literature, applying it to art criticism. Caliandro calls for an art that merges with reality and its contradictions, capable of touching people from the inside, as Jonas Mekas said.