18. – 19.06.2024 | Lecture and workshop
Saim Demircan: Exhibition as Image
In the advent of online image circulation via social media and aggregator sites, exhibition documentation has shifted from what has been a mostly private, academic usage – namely the archival – to become a rampant form of publicity. Nowadays, audiences can see more exhibitions virtually than physically troubling the traditional timeline of exhibition followed by documentation.
Using past and recent examples of how artists have documented art and exhibitions, this lecture shows how different subjectivities can play a role in the slippage between an artwork and the spectator.
For the workshop, we will discuss the topic of exhibition documentation and what it represents for students who are becoming practicing artists. We will then visit an exhibition currently on in Munich and document it ourselves, individually or collaboratively, and share these materials together.
Saim Demircan is a curator and writer based in Turin, Italy. Recently, he has curated the exhibitions Fausto Melotti, Theatre, Hauser & Wirth, London; Exhibition as Image, 80WSE, NYC; Cy Gavin, Aspen Art Museum, Colorado, and Rachel Rose, Fridericianum, Kassel. He was the 2017 recipient of the Goethe-Institut New York’s curatorial residency program, Ludlow 38 in NYC, where he curated a 12-month program of exhibitions and events. Between 2012 and 2015 he was a curator at Kunstverein München in Munich, and in 2016, curator-in-residence at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, Germany. Previously, he curated a two-year program of offsite projects, as well as Kaiki, an exhibition of works by Kai Althoff at Focal Point Gallery in Southend-on-Sea. Demircan has published on numerous artistic practices; his writing regularly appears in periodicals such as Art Monthly, frieze and Texte Zur Kunst.