Book Review: “Postsensual Aesthetics: On the Logic of the Curatorial”
- PUBLICATION caa.reviews
- DATE December 2, 2024
- URL caareviews.org
- PDF cecimoss.com
Excerpt /
“Curator and academic James Voorhies’s book Postsensual Aesthetics: On the Logic of the Curatorial asks how contemporary art exhibitions produce new knowledge when the modes of production surrounding these events have developed in complexity. Exhibitions now extend far beyond the gallery to include their broadcast on social media, publications of varying forms, and public programs (both in-person and virtual) surrounding these events. For Voorhies, this means that audiences now combine—and, crucially, expect—both sensual and cognitive experiences with art in order to learn and digest its content. Yet, traditional aesthetics still prioritizes the value of the viewer’s sensual experience with the autonomous and discrete art object. The heterogeneous qualities of contemporary art exhibitions require a reevaluation of this framework, and thus Voorhies asks: “Can we apply theories of aesthetics offered by Kant, Adorno and Rancière to multifaceted, research-based practices that strategically think through how a constellation of factors—including reading—combine to form the total work?” (21). Enter the key term for Voorhies’s analysis: “postsensual aesthetics,” a concept that relays his argument that contemporary art relies on both the sensual engagement inside the in-person exhibition site and the varied cognitive encounters beyond it—whether they be a print catalog, an online discussion in the comment fields of an Instagram post, a Hyperallergic article, or a workshop organized to accompany an exhibition.”