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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. 4
In
a similar vein, Steed
Taylor’s self-portrait photographs emphasize the duality
of the physical and spiritual in human nature (Me & Sudie),
expressing mortality and fragility through their focus on the body. Contemplating
his AIDS diagnosis, the artist collected pictures of his childhood and
says he “decided to explore what my life would look like if I was
removed from it. I selected the warmest photographs and marked myself
out of these images.” Bringing into focus the physical possibility
of death and the questions arising from the journey into the unknown,
Taylor materializes loss in front of our eyes in order to neutralize and
exorcise it. And yet the presence/absence of the artist’s image
is one of the most powerful metaphors of the exclusion that judgment and
prejudice generate.
Christian
Schwarzwald captures the “moment of shock/surprise/frieze/enlightenment/truth.”
In Hangover, the protagonists are men and women whose faces are
partially or totally washed in a blinding light. Through this light the
artist fixes on paper an epiphany, the sudden manifestation of a meaning,
the intuitive emergence of understanding from the recesses of consciousness.
This is a light radiating from inside. It illuminates the moment of change,
coagulating the unfolding potentialities in one peak of energy. In the
suspension of the frozen stares of the figures, Hangover holds the approach
that informs Schwarzwald’s work. “The consideration of different
paths and possibilities dictates decisions. The controversy that is created
in the space between making decisions and taking responsibility for them
is itself the artistic statement.”
Margie
Livingston is interested in the relationship between man
and nature. Structure (pink, green, gray) engages the viewer
both physically and emotionally. Here we perceive Nature--the fragile
beauty and chaos of superhuman forces--both as refuge and danger. The
artist reflects on the dangerous position of man as a “judge”
who is responsible for the egregious destruction of Nature. Re-presenting
Nature as an unknown dimension and a locus of uncontrollable forces, the
artist ponders the transience of human civilization. As we “find”
ourselves in the myth of Livingston’s eternal forest, a sense of
certainty moves the air among the colors and lights of the marks/leaves.
This primordial and absolute entity will survive our last judgment as
the metronome ticks our time away.
