My Meaty Questions

BASE QUESTIONS: Its early in the morning and I’m trying to piece together why I’m suddenly so pissed off about image culture, our sad little art world, and what not.  Here is where I’m starting:

1. Why do I keep seeing the same work over and over again?
2. Is that just artistic production coming under the reigns of late-capitalism’s “image is everything”, focus-on-the-marketability-of-your-practice shtick?
3. Or to be more constructive: How can an artist strike balance between going it alone, ignoring the art world, focusing on work -and/or- playing the game, making the connections, conforming to the dynamics of the community, exhibiting, selling, and gaining report?

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While having dinner with a friend/ colleague who is also blessed/cursed with the ability to be critical, I learned of the recent contractions that have been occurring in the Minneapolis art world. I know that Minneapolis is a very small place. Everyone knows everyone, and the art community (like my love-life) proves this adage to be exceptionally true.

Artists here bank on the gravy train of knowing someone at the gallery/museum/venue as a personal friend (usually someone known since kindergarten). That is just the social world of Minnesota colliding with the professional world. I’m not any exception to this -as- I know all too well how hard it is to get into a show unless you already have your foot in the door with someone who knows you, your work, and your history.

I feel this couldn’t be better reflected than in the highly abbreviated range of work that is exhibited and, in turn, which exhibitions are well attended. The last round of exhibitions was an immense disappointment to me. I’ve been idling and watching the Walker take on a seemingly endless stream of “block buster” big-name shows, instead of more experimental work (Brave New Worlds being the exception, I guess?).  An opening at the Walker is more like a night’s party that ends up on someone’s Facebook than an art event (about art).  The “alternative” galleries that are supposed to form an option to the 800 pound Walker/MIA gorilla in the corner have come to indicate only equally predictable presentations of work.
Overwhelmingly, I am able to predict exactly what type of work I am going to see. Comic abstraction. Crappy Polaroids. OCD art. Spectacular performances. Mapping for the sake of mapping. Those seem to be the genres of art being made, right now, that the art community has deemed acceptable to show. Not much else is getting through. Is this type of insipidity really indicative of a healthy art world? Shouldn’t we artists, educated in many different ways of seeing ourselves and the world around us, be capable of greater diversity?