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Curator's Statement
Introduction
Last and Universal: the Semantics of Judgment
Thought Through Images
Seduced by Freedom of Thought
Art in the Age of Short-Term Memory
A Call to Artists and Audience
Seventeen Modern Tales
Pages 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Seventeen Modern Tales, pt. 3
The
multimedia installation by Ted
Grudowski &
Adrienne Taggart invites us to experience a recontextualized
Jüngste Gericht. In Circumambient Tribunal (The Way Ahead, The
Far Behind), time is suspended as you enter the cubic chamber and
take a seat in the only chair. The installation confronts us with a hemispherical
wall where three-dimensional stereo photo-collaged prints are mounted.
Human-hybrid figures surround us with their gaze, dominating the room
with hieratic and inquiring faces, while the soundscape composed by Robin
Guthrie helps to make the atmosphere dense and unreal. We experience a
sense of estrangement; we find ourselves waiting for a verdict, but the
wait is stretched to infinity. Is waiting for a judgment already damnation?
Isn’t this the way prejudice operates, isolating the individual
in a no-time, no-space zone?
Materiality and spirituality emerge as polarities of
human being in the works of John Feodorov and Giuseppe Perone. Through
the use of basic materials such as clay and sand and simple objects, they
emphasize the contemporary conflict between worldly needs and the desire
for a more spiritual lifestyle. In Souls Awaiting a Future, John
Feodorov positions 144 souls made of clay upon a blanket
of stars, in front of a computer monitor that plays a screen-saver of
passing stars, “as if the souls were soaring through space on some
sort of journey while remaining motionless on the floor.” While
short-circuiting end and beginning in the idea of the eternal return,
the artist evokes the idea of a future out of control: “it isn't
clear who or what is controlling their destiny; they are in transition,
still attached to their mortality (the clay)”--the original matter
of Adam. The poetic beauty of Souls Awaiting a Future is concealed in
this moment of enlightenment.
Giuseppe
Perone’s Untitled reinterprets the iconography
of the angel as a symbol of spirituality. A simple black table and three
simple chairs invite us to sit. Each chair has a pair of angel wings attached,
cast in resin and covered with sand. Untitled contains a subtle ambiguity:
the artist seems to suggest that “salvation” and “beatification”
can only be achieved today by returning to a simple life, which is suggested
in the simplicity of the furnishings. At the same time, the winged chairs
ironically address our prejudicial self-righteousness. Sitting around
the table, we find ourselves wearing wings. And as an angel, each of us
will be--in our own eyes and in the public’s--the personification
of the just while making decisions.
