Shell-Reflexive

The Bas Fisher Invitational (BFI) has moved to the Downtown ArtHouse, a new space in Downtown Miami, and is pleased to announce the opening of new Weird Miami programming with the exhibition Shell-Reflexive and a bus tour led by art space Spring Break.

Inspired by Miami's relationship to the yearly art event that transforms the city into an international arena of art and commerce -- Art Basel Miami Beach -- Shell-Reflexive operates on a principle of self-reflexivity seeking to inhabit the mechanisms that convert meaning into monetary value in the cycle of art.

Phase One:

Art's meaning -- in all of its forms and discords -- is the categorical phenomenon that continues to set the art object apart from the mere object. However, with the development of advanced communication and production capacities, the contemporary art object has had to develop a mechanism outside of itself, an invisible shell, in order to distribute its meaning and guarantee its continuance as "art." Through institutional and monetary agreements, critical discourses and narratives, social relationships, art's shell manifests itself bringing the artwork into visibility.

Finding inspiration in the objects that usually lie just outside of the exhibition space -- museum merchandise -- the artists in Shell-Reflexive reflect on the nature of "art merch" as material supports for the distribution of art's meaning and create their own versions and mutations of "art merch." Visitors will encounter something that skirts the line between exhibition and store, where art "works" have been replaced by "merchandise," which can be purchased for non-art prices.

Phase Two:

Shell-Reflexive can be understood as a mechanism that evaluates the current status of art in relation to its shell. By turning the exhibition inwards -- dissolving the order of visibility that says artwork first, mediation second -- Shell-Reflexive seeks to inhabit art's shell as a site of value-creation. The economy created by the merchandise sold will be collectively invested by the artists and curator into the stock market, which, depending on the success of the investment, could serve to finance a future exhibition. A gesture meant to highlight that art is never innocent, especially today, when meaning is a hybrid shell that hovers outside of art itself.

Shell-Reflexive
Kuratorin: Agatha Wara

Künstler: AIDS-3D  (Daniel Keller, Nik Kosmas), Simon Denny, Yngve Holen, Ilja Karilampi, Katja Novitskova, Halvor Ronning, Timur Si-Qin, Spring Break, Anne de Vries, Phillip Zach