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Some of the best writings on aggregators and CAD, in their estimation of “super-speed” replacing “what had been a process of legitimation, attributable to particular institutions or critical bodies, now becomes a process of simple visibility, attributable to the media apparatus itself” fails to account for the now redundancy of the gallery itself as a primeval form of property wealth lending credence to work that should (if speed is all powerful) be being usurped by the even more immediately immediate Instagram and direct sales and artist websites, that CAD could be curating. Though some argue this transition is happening. Even if CAD obviously still believe in some form gallery/name/institutional pedigree necessary to value the object (which the likes of Ian Rosen and a few intrepid green and orbital galleries has proven themselves pre-legitimated enough to circumvent this proprietary requirement) this truly site-less approach hasn’t manifested itself. In fact sited documentation seems to be on the rise, and emphasized to dramatic effect, highlighting the gallery’s architectural ticks, absurdly so. That Berlin’s Tanya Leighton gallery, of which Sanchez highlights, despite performing the neutral painted grey floors and glowing white walls, is one of the more architecturally memorable galleries. All around images of the object’s site, the installation shot, generally outnumber if not replace entirely the image of the object, even to the detriment of understanding the object. The site as the producer of the art object’s “aura” was established in different way by Boris Groys take on Benjaminian aura in “Art in the Age of Biopolitics” in referring to documentations (in terms of artifacts of conceptual art) need for the site. “A close reading of Benjamin's text makes clear that the aura only originates by virtue of the modern technology of reproduction - that is to say, it emerges in the same moment as it gets lost. And it emerges for the same reason for which it gets lost.” Artists recently beginning using their power to torture the aura power of the site to bend it and its loss to their will: Jay Chung & Q Takeki Maeda. The surrealist vernacular of most contemporary is predicated on this aura for its totems, its mysterioizing, its unknowability, this distance between the object and the viewer. Sontag: "Distance seems built into the very experience of looking at photographs..."
TL;DR: Documentation highlighting architectural ticks is in, the aura of today's surrealist art is predicated on it.
See too : Jay Chung & Q Takeki Maeda at 356 Mission , "The Sea" at Mu.ZEE , "Flat Neighbors" at Rachel Uffner , Ian Rosen at Kristina Kite
