ARTWORKS / PROJECTS

Description:

Plus-Valía is a model of reflection on the interacting processes in the construction of economic/symbolic value dimension in art.

The object exhibits the diverse roles, percentages and domains of the 200 most representative art collectors in the world. The research is based on that in the same year the magazine Artnews presents as the "top 200 collectors", in turn included in the list of the 700 richest people in the world published by Forbes. The piece shows his participations in the field of art, his foundations or private museums, his philanthropic centers, his positions in boards of public museums, as sponsors of biennials, etc.

Plus-valía [Surplus Value] (2012)[1] , a statistical display* laid out like a pie chart – dialogues with the other piece that expands upon the concept. The first piece provides a set of monochrome values about variation and distribution of hegemony, collecting and the museum (its public and private status), whereas the second piece lays out a set of relations that, from indicators in this space, show not only the 200 top collectors and their 25 most lucrative businesses, but also their combinatory forms in percentages associated with their participation on museum boards, the museums themselves, those that have foundations, and finally, the philanthropists. Surplus Value (2012) documents, measures, and gives scaled visibility to the growing dependence on the market, the pornographic on/scenities between art and capital.

excerpt by Capital On/scenities by Teresa Riccardi

[1] Plus-valía [Surplus Value] finds an antecedent in Herrero’s 1997 work Mi Botín [My Booty], in which the notions of ‘extractivism’ and collecting are connected as founding/instituting ones, from a post- colonialist and ‘museumized’ perspective.
*[English in original – trans.]

Critical Texts:
Capital On/scenities
by Teresa Riccadi