28.02 - 21.04.2007, Bratislava



It is obvious that the artist of today is no longer an introverted, isolated, mysterious producer of objects (paintings or sculptures); nor, for that matter, that boisterous libertine who once graced social gatherings as a de rigueur accessory. The contemporary artist is a worker, a producer, a citizen, and above all a narrator, whose "immaterial work" deals with affect, meaning, desire, signification and pleasure. It is in this frame of mind that seven individuals working in the same medium — video — are brought together in this exhibition: these seven artistic practices should be seen to be producing criteria and knowledge, not objects.
The works of Danica Dakic, Kota Ezawa, Róza El-Hassan, Lena Lapschina, Katarzyna Skupny, Adam Vackar and Rudina Xaferi all lurk within the fissures of a society made vulnerable by the vertiginous transformations affecting our own condition as subjects and as citizens. Contemporary society no longer conceives of itself as it once did — in isolation. Rather, it expands in complex networks whose interconnection, growth and sophistication are fostered by media and economic globalization. A great many contemporary artistic practices reveal, through an array of gestures, the complex and intimate relations that are developing today between information, power and visual experience. From the video documentary to actions or "performances" and digital animation, Videology assembles a plurality of narratives in which we recognize, with varying degrees of intensity, this political or social dimension. These aren't denunciations or testimonials, but rather glances, at times critical, at times simply mute, which cast doubt on notions such as "truth", "transparency", or "representation".
In one way or another, then, these artists, as many others, are claiming the right to narrate — to observe the world in which we live as an open process, not a finite formula.

Marta Gili, Barcelona/Paris, December 2006




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gandy gallery
Panenskà 30
811 03 - Bratislava
tl/f:421 254410801
www.gandy-gallery.com