Amateurism

The Hei­del­berg­er Kun­stverein pre­sents AM­A­TEURISM an in­ter­na­tio­n­al group ex­hi­bi­tion with par­ti­ci­pa­tion of four­teen artists. The ex­hi­bi­tion ex­amines the pheno­menon of am­a­teurism in con­tem­po­rary art, in which artists go be­yond the boun­daries of ex­ist­ing cat­e­gories, dis­ci­p­lines, and in­sti­tu­tions, navi­gat­ed by their cu­rios­i­ty. In as­so­ci­a­tion with a tra­di­tion of dilet­tant, the ›am­a­teur‹ has been con­sid­ered one of those cul­tu­r­al fig­ures whose ›pure‹ and self­less love for par­tic­u­lar ob­jects, or arts. By con­trast, pro­fes­sio­n­als are those who are ›on­ly in it for the mon­ey‹. How­ev­er, so­ci­e­ty has gone through a sig­ni­f­i­cant trans­for­ma­tion over the last cen­turies, brought by the in­flu­ence of the glob­al mo­bil­i­ty, of cap­i­tal­ism, and the de­vel­op­ment of dif­fer­ent forms of in­dus­tries and tech­nolo­gies with net­work con­nec­tiv­i­ty. This cer­tain­ly af­fects a di­cho­to­mous con­cept such as that of am­a­teur/pro­fes­sio­n­al. The ex­hi­bi­tion be­gins with the pre-avant-garde works cre­at­ed by the In­co­hérents Art Move­ment (1882–1896 / France), which man­i­fest­ed ›Do what you are not pro­fes­sio­n­al in!‹ Tak­ing an an­a­lyt­i­cal look at use of the no­tion of am­a­teur, the ex­hi­bi­tion jux­ta­pos­es the works by the move­ment with the ones by con­tem­po­rary artists from the 1950s to the pre­sent. A unique as­sem­blage of ob­jects and art works cre­ates a dia­logue, which in­di­cates the dif­fer­ent use of the no­tion, and it is sim­p­ly not pos­si­ble to cat­e­go­rize what am­a­teur/pro­fes­sio­n­al is by ex­ist­ing stan­dards. The ex­hi­bi­tion pre­sents a shift of mean­ing of am­a­teur in the past and an ex­pan­sion of imag­i­na­tions about what am­a­teurism could mean in con­tem­po­rary so­ci­e­ty, by si­t­u­at­ing it­self in be­tween dis­ci­p­lines, fields, cat­e­gories and norms.