Exploring the Potentials and Challenges of Virtual Distribution of Contemporary Art

Abstract

This paper explores the potentials and perils of the distribution of visual art in the virtual realm. Beginning with a mapping of the interplay between artistic practice and computer technology, I attempt to trace the levels upon which art and the Web have been integrated. After examining early instances of virtual exhibitions of physical art and the potentials that the internet bears as a medium of art experience, I will cover digitally nascent art’s structural address of the internet and its medium-specificity. In the light of the recent ubiquity of the participatory internet, there is a move toward developing an understanding of the integrative post-medium practices of post-internet art. Exploring the new role that the artist, artistic practice, and the artwork occupy in relation to the internet serves to trace how the Web affects the distribution of contemporary visual art on an individual and commercial level. Also revealed is the degree to which post-internet and new media practices are not autonomous from conventional art institutions, but actively strive to integrate themselves into the existing economic structures of the art market.