The 7th Gwangju Biennale is not simply to make an exhibition about exhibitions

The principal exhibition logic of 7th Gwangju Biennale will have no thematic framework. Instead, it is comprised of a series of selected traveling exhibitions invited to use the biennale as a destination, a stop on the touring itinerary in the global exhibition network. By inviting exhibitions to the biennale, the aim is not simply to make an exhibition about exhibitions or to debate the principles of curatorial culture. Rather, exhibitions are understood here as fundamental expressions of cultural and intellectual practice, and as such have gone beyond being understood as a form of reflection or forum of debate for art. In our view, exhibition practices, whether centered in museums or commercial galleries, are meeting points for multiple, polymorphic, and diverse publics. In addition, exhibitions have acquired their own unique language and codes of transmission and translation of works of contemporary art, adding to the developing polyglot nature of global cultural discourses. Thus, the principal intention of the 7th Gwangju Biennale is to dedicate a sustained reflection not only on the codes, but, on the discursive relationship between the work of art and its context of presentation, and the environment of display. For the 7th Gwangju Biennale, the exhibition form as such becomes one of the biennale’s principal mediums, a way of simultaneously looking backward and forward, as well as taking stock of the complex ecology of contemporary art and culture. This form functions in relation to the variegated expressive and conceptual methodologies of artists inhabiting the exhibition spaces and sites of the biennale. But instead of considering the context of production ? the artist’s studio ? as the starting point of invitations to artists, the exhibition will focus intensely on an intermediary space, the space of encounter between artwork and viewer, between experience and artistic concept. This intermediary space is the site of reception: the exhibition system.