This artwork put forth a provocative business model for the art market through economic and social analyses. Cirio’s artwork Art Commodities consists of flowcharts and texts on a website that utilizes persuasive financial and economic language towards envisioning a sustainable art market. It offers alternative modes for trading and collecting art in order to establish democratic aesthetic values coupled with business opportunities. The flowcharts are models for the sustainable trade of artworks and the formation of aesthetic taste among artists, critics, collectors, and dealers. The artwork also introduced a new protocol called the Smart Art Market, which proposes the establishment of a large series of unique art pieces sold for very low prices. This economic model is enabled by Smart Digital Art Objects, a format invented by Cirio to authenticate digital art via cryptography before the NFT blockchain technology in art trading had begun. As a form of institutional critique, this work offers a critical stand on the financialization of art and it questions how art can become the conceptualization of the validation and circulation of itself. In the installation, digital prints of the flowcharts are framed and displayed together. The printed flowcharts refer to business models and market strategies, as well as diagrams illustrating the development of art aesthetics.
Selected shows and presentations
Useless Objects, exhibition at Mirror Project di Barriera, 2019, Turin - Italy
Alternative CAMPO17, lecture at Spaziobuonasera, 2018, Turin - Italy
Art Futures: Beyond Profit & Price, lecture at Tate Modern, 2017, London - UK