The Tyranny of Representativeness in Art Casting

Christophe Kihm critiques the conflation of artistic and economic practices, arguing that the relationship is mediated by a growing number of intermediaries—media, critics, curators, gallerists—whose proliferation has reshaped art's diffusion. This shift mirrors a broader societal trend where distribution structures dominate production. Kihm identifies a symptomatic exhibition model that borrows from biennials and fairs, aiming for exhaustive representativeness by including ever more artists. The selection process resembles modeling casting: curators audition artists in mass, spending about fifteen minutes each, often discovering their work on the spot. This model of representativeness pervades art publishing (an editor selects ten curators who each select ten artists) and the press (through generational discourse). Kihm warns that representativeness is a perverse effect of distribution's dominance, displacing aesthetic and political criteria onto cultural marketing, and signaling a critical abdication.