Carlo De Rita

Abstract

The author considers contemporary art as an anesthetic exemption from any dissenting reconfiguration of sense and from any aesthetical conflict. The whole display system of galleries, of custody and of critics going beyond the art museum display — such as the laboratory paradigm of relational and participatory art — testifies of a regime where it is impossible to distinguish art from life, where social distinction and mass serial production are combined into the mark of distinction of the fashion and luxury uniqueness, so that it becomes functional to the capitalistic ipervalorization. To what extent can
a dissenting instance of art rid itself from such an anesthetic capitalistic mirror and of from its impolitic consumption, then? How can contemporary artistic practices originate an aesthetic conflict on the sharing of sense?