EXHIBITION [fr. exhibition]

Normally, an artist has to wait months or years to set up an exhibition.
It is necessary to negotiate with an art institution, find funding etc.
This limits the artist with an urge to respond to contemporary matter.
Unless the artist makes graffiti in the street or is a capable hijacker of internet space, the artist cannot comment on the news without delay.
When the phenomenon of exhibitions emerged in a larger scale during the 19th century, it inherited the format of the museum.
An exhibition is a kind museum-without-eternity.
A short-lived museum or a temporal museum.
This museum-without-eternity inherited another aspect as well: the emerging consumerism of the 19th century.
Some characteristics of the art work underwent a significant change with the culture of exhibitions.
The strive for eternity was challenged by the very temporaity of the exhibition in such a way, that at the same time the work appealed for immortality as Very Good Art or as an Important Masterpiece, it could very well see itself as being in Death Row or Cellar of Oblivion.
But maybe more importantly, the strive after aesthetic autonomy was fundamentally challenged by the consumer culture emerging during the 19th century.
The art work could perfectly well see (in that curious way they gaze at us), that it was exhibited as a consumer good, to be bought or aesthetically appreciated/discarded.
The art work was an exhibit.
Today most of us today would say that the art work is an exhibit.
If it is not exhibited, it is no art work.
This illustrates how fast this museological and consumeristic attitude towards the art work has established itself.
The art work should be behind glass, behind a shopping window, in a montre ... to be looked at.
For an Emergency Room the situation is the exact opposite.
In an Emergency Room the art work frames (makes visible) what is invisible outside the exhibition.
In more than a metaphorical sense the art work looks at the spectator while pointing at a visual crime.
The spectator is now interrogated by the shop window or museum montre.
The question posed are of visual and conceptual character by the pointing machine.
To exhibit is to give to the public.
You don’t exhibit on your own.