Curated by Ruba Katrib
The 2007 “Grand Tour”—a high-octane trek through mega-exhibitions and fairs in Venice, Basel, Kassel, and Münster—was but one peak in the bubble-financed art world’s far-flung, seemingly nonstop, ever grander parade. “Convention,” presented in another city that became a principal stopover for the itinerant hordes, seeks to take stock of recent years’ fairs, biennials, and related phenomena. Local artists (Jim Drain, Gean Moreno, Bert Rodriguez) and their international counterparts (Julieta Aranda, Superflex) will reflexively engage what critic Peter Schjeldahl has termed “festivalism” through, among other strategies, performances, site-specific installations, and collaborations with the Miami community. To jaded ears, such a survey sounds, well, conventional—and, in newly straitened circumstances, possibly anachronistic. But the show nonetheless offers a welcome opportunity for artists and museum alike to reflect on what it means to operate (or to have operated) in such an environment.
