The art of disappearance : the architecture of the exhibition and the construction of the modern audience

A critical culture requires that the site of appearance, the temporal coincidence of the subject, the object and the site, be acknowledged as a ground for meaning. Through a built investigation and a theoretical address this thesis examines the site of appearance for contemporary creative practice; the extent to which it continues to be defined by and contained within the conceptual frame of the Enlightenment aesthetic as the privileged discourse of the object. In a detailed analysis of the architecture of the exhibition, the 18th century Academy Salon and the Parisian bourgeois hotel are juxtaposed with examples from the late 20th century practice of site-specific exhibition. This comparison reveals an essential connection between art and architecture, between architectural form and social representation. An alternative concept of the exhibition as a site of appearance thereby acknowledges individual, temporally specific interpretation as a potential ground for critical discourse within the contemporary art institution