Joshua Schwebel is a conceptual artist, whose work concentrates primarily on disclosing the power to create meaning inherent in the art world’s forms of presentation and reception. Starting out from himself and his position as an artist, in his work he extends his criticism of the discrepancy between ideal and reality to working conditions in art institutions. Through interventions and the circulation of art outside the generally expected areas of reception, he succeeds in re-assessing the factors that generate “value” in the art world. Schwebel denies artworks and exhibition spaces their expected function and position. By unveiling the process that manifests knowledge, at the same time Schwebel reveals the moment of tension between meaning and its construction.
In his project Subsidy, he illuminates the structural hierarchies and working conditions currently accepted in the context of cultural institutions on the basis of the interns’ work in Künstlerhaus Bethanien. By using the whole of his grant budget to pay interns working at KB during his stay there – who would not be paid otherwise – Schwebel makes the process into an exhibition object.

Joshua Schwebel is currently receiving a grant from the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec and the Ministère des Relations internationales du Québec.