Fern Potter, the chief strategy and growth officer at Multilocal, explained that the rise of curation in the last 18 months is driven by deal management, automation, and algorithmic influence. She noted that AI is helping to 'tidy up our house' with data, significantly impacting discoverability.
Quiet and understated, the show presents the work of 17 artists, who are either represented by the gallery or part of its wider network. In the exhibition text, the smallness in question is discussed not on the level of "scale or spectacle," but rather speaks to the idea of "concentration over expansion." The intention of the exhibition, positioned as a "living index," very much depends on where we place our attention.
The title might seem a little ironic, considering Hicks has covered arts and culture in the Pacific Northwest since 1978. But the heart of the argument - that critics more often stand in between their readers and art, representing a barrier to deeper understanding and appreciation, rather than offering them "a fresh perspective, a new way of entering into the discussion that any decent work of art invites" - echoed a sentiment I've held for a long time.
Last Saturday, the gallery hosted an impromptu one-day preview of Marcus Brutus: En Focus, which formally opened November 13 at Harper's Chelsea 512. The day before, we had arranged the paintings along the floor for a special client, one of Marcus's most dedicated supporters. The works, still in their shadowboxes, were placed by size beneath our current exhibition by Iria Leino.
Nina Protocol uses an open public network, where artists set their terms and keep 100% of any revenue from downloads; the collectively owned Subvert is intended to be an alternative to Bandcamp, where music files are bought and sold. Cantilever takes inspiration from curated film streaming platforms such as Mubi, offering a limited and rotating number of albums at a time (currently 10, but up to 30). What unites them is curation, a sense of community and an artist-friendly, anti-corporate model.
Curation flips this script. A publisher's greatest asset will always be their content, of course, but the advantage that sets them apart - the ace up their sleeve, so to speak - is their audience data. By putting that data to work in curated marketplaces, publishers can stretch the value of their content well beyond their own properties - bundling data and inventory into highly targeted, privacy-compliant packages that advertisers can buy directly.
Through our collaboration, we hope to open up new ways of thinking about what a triennial like Sharjah can become over time - leaving behind tangible strategies and ideas that respond to the needs and challenges of contemporary urban centers across the Global South and beyond.
Taking back our Internet, and making it useful again, is possible. But it is going to take some work. Similar to how we have to decide what food to put in our body, or how museums decide what to display, each of us needs to become curators of the information and sources we rely upon online.
