29th – 31st January 2010 / 11am – 18pm
MA fine art interim show 2010 Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design
Curated by MA Critical Writing and Curatorial Practice, Chelsea College of Art & Design
“Once upon a time, in some out of the way corner of the universe which dispersed into numberless twinkling solar systems, there was a star upon which clever beasts invented knowing. That was the most arrogant and mendacious minute of world history. But nevertheless, it was only a minute”. — Friedrich Nietzsche, On Truth and Lie in the Extra-Moral Sense, 1873
Necessary Illusions constructs seven itineraries that discuss and interpret ongoing fine art projects by sixty-three artists. The fragmented condition of ‘works in progress’ is hence addressed by the superimposition of meanings that will temporarily articulate and determine the audience’s experience.
Shaping rational structures in order to categorize difference and commonality entails, as Nietzsche argues, arrogant ambitions and mendacious assumptions to create methods of knowing. Thus, the imposition of fictitious constructs is made transparent, it is a necessary illusion.
The elusive nature of an idea in course of development, of a narrative emerging from the process of thought, and, eventually, an artwork-to-be, are hence momentarily fixed in their present significance, here and now, perceptible and substantial…but only for a minute.
Different levels of lighting, restricted access to specific areas, and enforced flows of movement in particular directions, create fictional journeys along which meaning and interpretation overlap, fostering both the physical and the intellectual experience of ‘passage’. This sense of transition through the space, disrupted and recomposed by prescribed itineraries, traces trajectories that move across the fragmented narratives of the artworks, visualizing the assertion of meaning.
The necessary illusions that this exhibition produces materialize at the crossroads between rationality and pleasure, the imposition of structures of thought and the submission to temporal frameworks of signification.
Opening times: 11am-6pm / Admission: Free
Location: Bargehouse, Oxo Tower Wharf, Barge House Street, London SE1 9PH
Press contact: curate@criticalism.org / www.criticalism.org
Map: Here
