Art is a problem

In this volume of selected essays, interviews, curatorial texts and reviews, spanning 1986-2012, Joshua Decter examines contemporary art in relation to its various ideological, public, discursive, and social contexts. The book encompasses seven chapters: “Institutional Critique® and its Discontents”; “Aporia (art as politics, the politics of art)”; “Everything is Social”; “Convoluted Cities”; “The (Un)De-definition of Art”; “What Do We Want from Exhibitions?”; and “On the Curatorial Road.” The author unpacks art’s paradoxical condition: art problematizes, and is intrinsically a problem. From this standpoint, he analyzes art’s definitions, functions, ethical entanglements, societal aspirations and cultural contradictions.