Beyond the Real: Art in the Age of Perpetual Reproduction
The Image Before the Experience
The exhibition begins well before its official opening. The public already knows about it, comments on it, and forms opinions before even stepping into the gallery. Contemporary art happens on Instagram, not as a direct experience, but as a flow of images that precedes, replaces, and ultimately defines how we engage with it. If a work isn’t photogenic, does it really exist? If an exhibition isn’t shareable, is it still relevant? Reality becomes secondary, merely a backdrop for a virtual preview that shapes perception and influences meaning.
Today, art is no longer something that happens in a space, but something that exists in a stream. People don’t engage with artworks when they are exhibited, but when they circulate online. Visiting a show has become a delayed experience. Viewers enter the physical space already carrying a set of images and narratives, with expectations shaped by the aesthetic filters of their screens. The artwork is expected to match this pre-vision, to confirm or challenge a story that has already begun. This creates a split between the real artwork and its digital counterpart, a gap between what exists physically and what exists in the collective gaze.
But how much does this pre-vision shape our perception of the work itself? Can we truly discover an exhibition that hasn’t first been filtered through a screen? Surprise seems to have vanished, replaced by a sense of familiarity that turns direct experience into a kind of confirmation. Everything new has already been seen. Everything unexpected has already been previewed. Art is now consumed twice. First through the media, then in person. And the second encounter often adds nothing new. It simply confirms what has already been absorbed.
This change isn’t just about perception. It’s structural. More and more exhibitions are being designed with their digital presence in mind, created to exist in two parallel dimensions: the real world and the social feed. Installations are arranged with the best camera angles in mind. Artworks need to be scalable and adaptable across formats. The layout of the space follows a compositional logic aimed less at live viewing and more at instant sharing. In this context, the real becomes a support for its own representation, a stage for an experience that takes place elsewhere.
This overlap between image and artwork redefines not just the exhibition, but also the role of the viewer. Today, anyone looking at an artwork is, consciously or not, also an intermediary. Their gaze doesn’t stop at observation, it transmits. A photo is no longer just a personal memory, but a public translation of experience. The artwork no longer lives in the act of seeing, but in the act of sharing. And in that shift, in the transformation of the observer into a broadcaster, the very meaning of artistic experience is radically rewritten.
The Temporality of the Image: Exhibitions Shaped by Social Media
For quite some time now, exhibitions have stopped following only the rhythms of the art world. Instead, they move to the pace of digital visibility. The opening is no longer the peak moment, but merely the starting point of a broader diffusion strategy that unfolds in waves, previews, exclusive content, reposts, and re-shares. Attention is fragmented, managed carefully to keep interest alive, spread across polished posts and fleeting stories. The audience is no longer just a spectator but an amplifier, called upon to participate in building the visual narrative of the event. But who really controls that narrative? The institution? The artist? Or the algorithm?
And what does this shift imply? Can we say that the lifespan of an exhibition is no longer defined by its actual time on display, but by its circulation online?
To thrive in this communication stream, interest needs to be fueled and reactivated, transformed into a continuous flow of content , generated both by institutions like museums and galleries, and by artists and creatives. Exhibitions become elastic events, expanding and contracting according to their visibility, adjusting to the consumption cycles of the digital audience. Every exhibition exists at least twice: once in its physical form, and once in its reproductions, its fragments, its reinterpretations. Often, it is this second version that survives, that becomes embedded in the collective memory.
This process changes how the artistic event is perceived. The value of an exhibition is no longer tied solely to the quality of the works on display, but also to its ability to sustain attention. The pace set by social media turns the experience into something segmented, where images don’t just document, they dictate the rhythm of the narrative. The exhibition breaks down into distinct phases: anticipation, reveal, dissemination. Communication strategies are shaped by this cycle, creating an artistic reality that must constantly regenerate itself to remain relevant.
But in this constant acceleration, what remains of the real experience? If exhibitions are primarily consumed through images and brief moments of attention, the direct encounter risks becoming a mere accessory to their digital broadcast. The artwork needs to be seen, yes, but more importantly, it needs to be shared. Images take center stage, and exhibitions adapt to that need, designing pathways and displays built for screens, for instantly recognizable content, for rapid replication.
The temporality of art bends to the temporality of social media, where attention is fleeting and forgetting is instant. Each exhibition competes not just with other exhibitions, but with the entire visual flood of the digital world, influencers, brands, global events. The exhibition is no longer just an artistic occasion, but a node in a vast content network that must play by the rules of visibility. And in this race for relevance, the idea of the exhibition as a space for contemplation begins to erode, replaced by an accelerated, interrupted experience, fragmented within the endless stream of images.
Instagram as Curriculum
An artist’s profile is no longer shaped solely by portfolios, catalogs, or press coverage. It’s defined by their digital presence, by how they position themselves within the content ecosystem, and by their ability to be instantly recognizable in a fast-paced scroll. Images become credentials, and posts turn into statements of intent. The value of an artwork lies not only in its concept or physical presence, but in its circulation.
Documentation no longer follows the event , it precedes and extends it, transforming the artwork into a constantly updatable device. It’s an exhibition that never really ends, always being re-edited, always ready to be reshared.
Some time ago, a curator told us how they had started selecting artists directly from Instagram, largely for reasons of speed and immediacy. Studio visits, portfolio reviews, and deep research, once essential parts of curatorial practice, are often postponed. A quick scroll through a feed is enough to evaluate aesthetic coherence and the ability to construct a recognizable visual identity. Only later, if the algorithm gave the green light, would there be a meeting with the actual work and the artist. But the first filter was the image, not the experience.
This shift hasn’t only changed how artists are selected, it has reshaped how they produce. Knowing that the first impact happens through a screen changes the way works are conceived and presented. Paintings adapt to the lighting contrasts of digital displays. Installations are photographed to maximize their recognizability. Performances are designed to produce iconic images. In a way, every artist is now expected to anticipate their digital impact before even considering the physical dimension of their work.
Years ago, before Instagram became the nerve center of artistic discovery, the timeline of preparing an exhibition followed a different rhythm. Press releases were drafted weeks in advance, but the exhibition’s public image would emerge slowly, through reviews, print publications, word of mouth in art circles. Today, a show exists the moment it is announced online. The pressure on that first impression is intense. The launch post must generate immediate attention. The preview image becomes a strategic decision that can determine the success of the event. It’s a constant competition for visibility, where it’s not always the most meaningful work that stands out, but the one most adaptable to the visual consumption habits of the digital audience.
But what does it mean for art to become just a stream of images optimized for engagement? What space is left for research, for process, for complexity? In this race for visibility, there’s a real risk that the artwork becomes an excuse for content, and that creative practice bends to the rules of an attention economy that rewards speed and instant recognizability. If Instagram is the new résumé, then the value of art is measured not just by its conceptual depth, but by its ability to exist, powerfully, within the endless digital flow.
Where Does Reality End?
What remains today of the direct experience of art, and how clearly can it still be distinguished from its digital double? Reproduction has always accompanied the history of art, but it now seems to have become its gravitational center. The image of the artwork, often more than the work itself, determines its visibility, critical reception, and place in collective memory. Yet in this shift from the real to the represented, a deeper transformation is unfolding. The exhibition is no longer just what happens in a physical space, but what survives as content, reformatted, distributed, and consumed.
Philosopher Jean Baudrillard predicted this: the simulacrum is no longer a copy of the original, but something that replaces it, a reality that feels more real than the real thing. Today, many exhibitions are not remembered for their physical presence, but for the image they produced, which is often more powerful, more polished, and more effective than the complex reality of the space itself. Walter Benjamin spoke of the loss of aura in the age of mechanical reproduction. But the aura has not been lost, it has simply shifted, into the algorithm, into the communication strategy, into the aesthetics of anticipation.
Charlotte Cotton has shown how contemporary photography no longer just documents. It shapes art, anticipates it, and influences its form. Works are conceived as optimizable content, designed for a digital gaze, for a fast, two-dimensional, fragmented experience. Boris Groys described an attention economy in which a work is valuable only if it manages to float within a continuous stream. What matters now is not whether an artwork is visited, but whether it is shared, remembered, and embedded in the collective visual archive.
But if the real experience is no longer essential, can we still speak of exhibitions? Or are we witnessing the creation of surfaces that exist only to be replicated? Art consumed online is not less real, but it is different. Its language, made up of filters, synthesis, and immediacy, becomes a code that seeps into real-life experiences, shaping them, influencing them, and preparing them for their inevitable digital afterlife.
In this scenario, the very idea of reality begins to unravel. It is no longer about distinguishing what is authentic from what is represented, but about understanding how authenticity itself has become a visual strategy, a construct. Art operates within this ambiguity, not to deny it, but to navigate it. It lives on the edge between the present and its projection, between what happens and what remains.
Reproduction as Destiny
Art can no longer escape the logic of sharing. Images now determine the success of an event, shape its reach, and define how it is remembered. But what happens when documentation becomes more important than the experience itself? If an exhibition only exists to the extent that it is disseminated, if reality becomes just a pretext for its digital version, then the very notion of presence begins to dissolve. It is no longer about experiencing art, but about watching it turn into an image.
The very act of choosing which images to share, which angles to favor, which details to isolate, is already a form of editing. It’s not just photo-editing software or artificial intelligence that alters perception, it is the moment of selecting one frame among many, of excluding part of reality to make the work more effective in a digital context. Every exhibition is reduced to a set of screen-optimized images, where color, light, and composition are adjusted to suit the logic of algorithmic visibility. Art, then, is not merely documented. It is continuously rewritten, refined, and reimagined at the very moment it is shared.
Perhaps, rather than resisting this dynamic, we need to understand its potential. If reproduction is the destiny of contemporary art, its dominant language, can the artist flip the script and use it as creative material? Art has always responded to its modes of circulation, turning them into expressive tools. Maybe the only path forward is not to deny the dominance of the image, but to expose it, to push it to the extreme until its mechanics are revealed, until the global feed becomes a new critical space.
In this shift, in the irreversible passage from the real to the virtual, what’s at stake is not only how art is perceived, but what art is becoming.
fakewhale
Founded in 2021, Fakewhale advocates the digital art market's evolution. Viewing NFT technology as a container for art, and leveraging the expansive scope of digital culture, Fakewhale strives to shape a new ecosystem in which art and technology become the starting point, rather than the final destination.
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