"If you’ve operated professionally within the contemporary art scene for a decade or two, and you attend one of its larger gatherings – say, the Venice Biennale, which my spies tell me is happening around now – then you might find that you know a lot of people. The ones you genuinely like and who, seemingly, genuinely like you; the ones you know by face and name and rub along with; the ones who look sort of familiar while they’re reminding you in detail of that escapade last time you met, in 2003; those somewhere in between. A biennale vernissage renders this shifting dynamic at outsize scale. It’s a fizzing Leyden jar of such interactions, which might lead a person to walk away from such an event thinking: ‘Wow, I have a lot of friends and acquaintances!’ or, ‘The artworld is such a friendly place!’ Well, yes. And no."