Suzanne Treister
Installation views from the exhibition '&' at Muzeum Sztuki, Lodz, Poland, curated by Thibaut de Ruyter (30 June - 5 November 2017)
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
R: Startup (Black) 2015
R: Startup (White) 2015
L: Startup (White) 2015
R: Startup (Black) 2015
R :Startup (Black) 2015
C: Startup (Black) 2015
R: HEXEN 2039/Diagrams/Mind Control 2006
L: HEXEN 2039/Diagrams/Mind Control 2006
L: HEXEN 2039/Diagrams/Mind Control 2006
L: HEXEN 2.0/HISTORICAL DIAGRAMS: The Computer - From the ANTIKYTHERA MECHANISM to QUANTUM TELEPATHOLOGY 2009-11
Thibaut de Ruyter: The exhibition & is an attempt to dive into artistic practice and aesthetic experience. It is an invitation to enter a world composed of mazes, déjà-vu, subtle similarities, strange symmetries and unexpected discoveries.
Paying an indirect and discreet homage to Gilles Deleuze’s doctoral thesis titled Difference and Repetition, the coordinating conjunction AND, associating two words, becomes the title of the exhibition but is reduced to a typographic sign (called ampersand in English), an abstract symbol resembling a maze or an infinite loop.
Many artists might tell you: an artwork often repeats its predecessor but carries on something slightly different. There is an inherent repetition in artistic practice based on the hope that the next work will always be better than the previous one. But everybody can also easily get lost by repeating the same gesture over and over, the same situation, without noticing that it became a trap. So are our days: we sometimes feel as if we are living in a maze where all paths will inevitably lead us to a similar place, whilst we are still hoping that something might change.
The exhibiton, presenting more than a hundred drawings by Wac?aw Szpakowski, but also a large selection of minimalist works of Cécile Dupaquier, diagrams by Suzanne Treister, videos by Aneta Grzeszykowska, models by Anna Orlikowska, strange visions by Henryk Morel or silkscreens by François Morellet, which play with the principle of difference & repetition to create an exhibition in the shape of an aesthetic maze.
Not only minimalism and abstraction are strongly linked historically to the concepts of difference & repetition, the actual technologies that we use in our everyday activities are also regulated by these words. They become the rules of a game that could be a labyrinth, an artwork, the Internet, our lives, but where, at the end, we might not find an exit.
Artists: Cécile Dupaquier, Aneta Grzeszykowska, Henryk Morel, François Morellet, Anna Orlikowska, Waclaw Szpakowski, Suzanne Treister Coordinator: Katarzyna Mróz