There was a not too distant time in which Arco was as something aspirational, perhaps too elitist and, to put it in some way, even excessively away from the criterion – and, above all, from the budget – of the common of mortals. It seemed that if you didn’t count … With a double degree in Art History + Political Science and a postgraduate degree in audiovisual communication you were not even remotely capable of correctly assessing what you had in front. Not to mention the budget: without six ‘cash’ figures in the checkbook this was not your place in the world. The ‘Crème de la Crème’, gentlemen.
And, suddenly, one day, we have dawned and the fair has become the opposite. The thin line between the first division of contemporary art and the interior design meeting of the Community of Madrid has been transferred and one does not know if it is in front of works that one day will enlarge the Catalog of a breed collectorof those with house in Biarritz, or before the Giant posters catalog To label a chueca gastrobar. You may be exceeding me. In that case I apologize beforehand, but I already entered Pavilion 9 of IFEMA something crossed. And I don’t know why.
It was hard for me to get in workI recognize it, perhaps the background noise -as a medieval market -, perhaps the tourist atmosphere -with guides, as in Toledo -, but the truth is that I went through the galleries are the galleries like who goes through old book stores in the old books in the Cuesta de Moyanowithout anything caught my attention especially at the aesthetic level or in the conceptual plane. It gave me the feeling of being in a warehouse, in one of those southern boccantes where everything happens without a conductive thread or story, as if everything had stopped importing and life had become a ‘reos’ of Instagram, of those that you pass without paying attention.
If an alien had fallen into an arc and had to explain to the universe what are the current trends within contemporary art, I think it would be unable to do so. The facilities, mobiles, the theme most linked to organic material and audiovisual format have disappeared. But the following has not yet arrived. The purely abstract does not have a decisive presence and, despite some attempts, the figurative does not just lose the blush to present itself as equally contemporary and claim without complexes.
What is clear is that, if the level has dropped, it is because the galleries want to sell. And, as a consequence, The ‘woke’ has died. If other editions came out with an ultra feminist theme empathy, of decreasing ecology, of an obsessed aesthetic with the sexual, posthumanist, post -ethnicist identity, all that has disappeared. No one wants to waste time and, since those issues have no way out, Arc has been filled with mediaries. It may seem contradictory that we have spent half a life claiming an art free of politics so that, when we are finally achieved, we will face their neutral pH.
But there is a difference between giving the tabarra with the ‘Wake’ ideology and remain oblivious to the same time. Somehow we are in a moment of interwar without consolidated tendencies, generational spirit or creative ‘Approach’. The ‘woke’ has died and the apocalyptic theme of a world at war has not yet arrived. He will, without a doubt, next year. At this time we are seeing the artistic result of the ‘insights’ last year. The works arising from the current drive will see them in 2026, where we will suffer, of course, seizures after a massive overexposure to Trump, Putin JD Vance and other evil agents. It always happens: Vietnam gave us Dylan, Franco to the move And populism will give birth to something that we still do not know what it will be, but that this harmless hospital soup will be better.
Excuse the chauvinism, but I want to make special mention to the stand of Cultural ABC, with an unbeatable memory of the missing Pierre Gonnord and, specifically, to a photo of Bimba Bosé and David Delfín that my heart has shuddered. Three fallen in a golgotha that comes to remind us that time ends. And I don’t know if it is contemporary art or the fair itself, but none of those present are to waste time at a dead point that already lasts too many years.
#José #Peláez #Arc #Trip
