Curator and academic James Voorhies’s book Postsensual Aesthetics: On the Logic of the Curatorial asks how contemporary art exhibitions produce new knowledge when the modes of production surrounding these events have developed in complexity. Exhibitions now extend far beyond the gallery to include their broadcast on social media, publications of varying forms, and public programs (both in-person and virtual) surrounding these events. For Voorhies, this means that audiences now combine—and, crucially, expect—both sensual and cognitive experiences with art in order to learn and digest its content. Yet, traditional aesthetics still prioritizes the value of the viewer’s sensual experience with the autonomous and discrete art object. The heterogeneous qualities of contemporary art exhibitions require a reevaluation of this framework, and thus Voorhies asks: “Can we apply theories of aesthetics offered by Kant, Adorno and Rancière to multifaceted, research-based practices that strategically think through how a constellation of factors—including reading—combine to form the total work?” (21). Enter the key term for Voorhies’s analysis: “postsensual aesthetics,” a concept that relays his argument that contemporary art relies on both the sensual engagement inside the in-person exhibition site and the varied cognitive encounters beyond it—whether they be a print catalog, an online discussion in the comment fields of an Instagram post, a Hyperallergic article, or a workshop organized to accompany an exhibition. These “modes of mediation for public address” Voorhies sees as “expansive forms of exhibitions and, thus, as modes of curatorial production” (6). The book is a diligent effort to take stock of these different methodologies of curating, and how they inform the ways in which ideas circulate through contemporary art and its constellation-like presentation in our current environment. As Voorhies states plainly, “Much of what we know and digest about art is not based on physical contact with the object or the space of exhibition” (123). Crucially, Postsensual Aesthetics teases out what we might know and digest through art given its increasingly expansive and complex mediation.

The book is organized into three sections that focus on two exhibitions, dOCUMENTA(13), Documenta11, and one institution, the Nanyang Technological University Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore (NTU CCA), as case studies to explore Voorhies’s thesis. These chapters are then separated by a prelude, interlude, and a conclusion titled “Exact Imagination,” which poetically insert the author’s reflections as grounded in the work of Theodor W. Adorno. Their titles reflect an effort to structure the overall book as a musical composition, a nod to the late philosopher. Here, Voorhies seeks to “animate” Adorno against common tendencies to “historicize his writings” (19). These subsections position Adornoian aesthetics as a filter through which to contemplate how contemporary audiences experience art.

Section one turns to dOCUMENTA(13), curated in 2012 by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, for whom the question “What could the word art be a stand-in for?” was an opening for a sprawling, tentacular exhibition that drew as much weight from its many “agents,” led by Chus Martínez, as from the one hundred ninety-four exhibiting artists. In sum, the exhibition attempted to convey a state of mind—delivered by major works by artists like Claire Pentecost, Mark Dion, and Pierre Huyghe as well as small published booklets—instead of a discrete and clean thesis. Voorhies champions dOCUMENTA(13)’s emphasis on the exhibition as an animated space of research and discourse, and sees the show as an important marker in the evolution of curatorial practice. In itself, dOCUMENTA(13) is “an exhibition from strategically coordinated elements that refuse to allow the physical site to be the primary point of contact, thus requiring cognitive engagement beyond it” (48). As such, it is a shining example of precisely the new standard for “postsensual” curatorial practice. Voorhies is also careful to make the distinction that the type of research and truth-seeking undertaken by Christov-Bakargiev in this exhibition is not purely equivalent to those found in other disciplines, such as in science. Voorhies applauds Christov-Bakargiev’s dedication to artist-led research and artistic freedom, allowing creative exploration to be an end unto itself. In Voorhies’s reading, the curatorial becomes a nonreductive “way to complicate things” inside and outside of the exhibition site (56).

Section two delves into Documenta11 from 2002, curated by Okwui Enwezor, to illustrate how experimental modes of curating concentrated on an expanded field of research can write art history. Enwezor set out to situate postcolonialism as a foundational concept within the realm of global contemporary art, and Voorhies makes the case that Enwezor’s exhibition was impactful precisely because the curator included an ambitious publication and event program alongside exhibiting artworks. Voorhies details the eight books published in conjunction with Documenta11: a 620-page exhibition catalog, a photobook showcasing the work of participating artists, four books published in conjunction with the suite of Platform public programs, a short guide to the exhibition, and a research volume exploring the concept of the “urban imaginary” in Latin America. Voorhies cites the depth and scale of Documenta11’s publications as the key factor in the exhibition’s continued importance, and as a component in cementing postcolonialism within greater art historical discourse.

While the first two sections examine large-scale exhibitions that illustrate the postsensual through vast curatorial structures that concentrate equally on exhibition sites as well as various publications, public programs, and forms of broadcast, Voorhies uses section three to focus on the NTU CCA in Singapore under the founding directorship of curator Ute Meta Bauer, beginning in 2013. The institution was established as a partnership between Nanyang Technological University and an economic redevelopment project sited at Gillman Barracks, where the building was nested among various commercial entities. This allowed Bauer to bring together the audiences visiting this site for recreation and commerce with the educational and research mandate of the university. The hybridity of NTU CCA itself (which included exhibitions, residencies, education, and research under the same roof and guided by uniform curatorial themes) fostered what Voorhies terms an “institution object” that continually produces knowledge—and exemplifies what a far-reaching dOCUMENTA(13) or Documenta11 could look like if these exhibitions were cast as long-term institutions.

The concluding chapter “Exact Imagination” returns to Voorhies initial point of departure, arguing for the increased importance of the constellation of knowledge production around an exhibition, such as publications, social media, and other associated materials, rather than the mere immediate experience of viewer and artwork. Most audiences experience an exhibition through this postsensual framework, shifting the scope and focus for both curators and institutions. Voorhies brings in Adorno’s concept of “exact imagination” to address how the involvement of multiple registers transforms one’s interaction with an artwork or an exhibition. Exact imagination describes the type of cognitive interaction of an experiencing subject that involves not only aesthetic form but also the subject’s own lived experience and combined knowledge. All three—aesthetic form, lived experience, and combined knowledge—ignite the subject’s imagination and forge a bridge between ideas and the physical and cognitive experience of art, yielding an individual interpretation. If the aesthetic encounter today is dispersed far beyond the exhibition, and, crucially, invites knowledge about art untethered from an in-person encounter, then this moment of exact imagination still privileges the transformation of an aesthetic experience while allowing variation in the avenues for that reception. Voorhies states that Adorno’s assessment “encourages us to look more generously at the exhibition as object” where the curatorial is “. . . the frame for thinking cohesively,” and the curator is the orchestrator of “connective tissues among knowledge, lived experience and the aesthetic form via the exhibition object” (125–26). This rereading of Adorno is one of the strongest portions of the publication, as it begins to touch on how curatorial work can evolve given the fact that cognition is shifting within a media environment largely informed by social media and smartphones. It invites curators to more adventurously approach their practice to meet a distracted and distributed public, and to push all facets of exhibition production across platforms and places to address a thoroughly postsensual moment. That said, Voorhies’s initial argument could be developed further by recent research from scholars like N. Katherine Hayles and Mark B. N. Hansen, both of whom have explored the enmeshed qualities of human attention within a changing technological environment. How can one imagine a postsensual curatorial practice that resonates with audiences whose cognitive and attentive abilities are codeveloping in symbiosis with new technologies? It’s a fascinating question, and one the field is just beginning to answer.