The Conspiracy of Lightness
Rut Himmelsbach
Rene Strudel
Reinhard Fichtner
Lionel Maunz
Bridget Donahue with Peter Schuette
Phi Nguyen
Marc Hundley
Erik Lindman
curated by Liam Everett
July 11th-24th
Opening July 11th 7-11pm
C.R.E.A.M. Projects
99 Franklin Street. Greenpoint
The sound of the image or the speed of it can be elusive to measure. Especially at a diagonal or when it’s moving backwards as some pictures do. When the image fidgets and hides or refuses to respond. When its heavy or when its light. When its heavy with light and when its lightened with heaviness.
In the making process before the image is presentable is perhaps when its truth is at its most vulnerable, beautiful and awkward state. At this phase it belongs to the present, not yet victim to the fables of history and future. And the artist can be careful at this point, operating slowly with attention and with intention.
It’s impossible not to lie as all art makers do, either to themselves or to the viewer who is more or less doing the same, that is deceiving him or her self in their relation to the image or object that they are confronted with. When one asks us to see their work, what is meant by the word ‘see’? How should we see it: all at once or bit-by-bit, from the inside or the outside?
Does the photograph of the tree serve as proof of its existence or that of the photographers? Or does it rather function as a kind of certificate of death?
There is the possibility that all this elusiveness or deception that thepresented image provokes is intentional. It’s most probable that this intent to deceive is surely only fabricated on the sub conscious level. A conspiracy formed in the quiet of the collective self as an elaborate and complex system of protection. The real that protects its self from the abstract and the abstract that protects itself from the real.
The eight artists participating in this exhibition all offer complex responses and/or reactions to the ambiguous nature and power of the visual as a medium of communication. Each hypnotized by the intimate and absurd act of manipulating the image as a way to navigate the vast system of veils thickly webbed throughout contemporary society.
-Liam Everett
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