Exhibition: Blind Plural. 3rd to 19th of March 2016

An exhibition of works selected from the Gallery`s annual ‘Open Call for Artists’

Ronis Varlaam, Vanessa Short, Naifei Wu, Jaeyeon Yoo, Richard Niman, Michael Hazell, Olivia Johnson, Ben Coiacetto, Tom Cardew, Owen Oppenheimer, Pablo Saura, Sophie Marguerite Adams, Fionn Wilson, Stella Winskell-Moore, François Larini, Ben Walker, Robbie O’Keeffe, Grassy Noel, Susan Eyre, Rodrigo B. Camacho, Daniel Wechsler, Rhiannon Lewando, Monika Tobel, Jean Neaj, Steph Goodger, Paul Mitchell, Helene Williams, Luisa Spina.

Curated by Jaime Valtierra.

Olivia_Johnson_Weeping Beauties- Lipstick Stains_Photograph_2016Opening: 3rd of March. 7 to 9.30 pm. as part of the First Thursdays Open until Late organized by Whitechapel Gallery

Hundred Years Gallery presents ‘Blind Plural’, an exhibition of works selected from this year`s Open Call for artists. Twenty-eight artists have been included in the exhibition; one winner selected by public vote will have the opportunity to prepare for a solo show at the end of 2016.

The Open call invited artists working in all media to submit work that ‘comments on or plays with issues related to the nature of hostility, its forms and representation…Art of a subversive, anarchic, or experimental nature is welcomed, as well as pieces which content embraces with lucidity current political and social issues on a critical and constructive level’.

The spectrum covered by the selected artists results in an exploration of the issue of hostility from the roots of such feeling in the individual, to larger scale forms of collective violence.

The pieces in the show invite in certain instances an understanding of the relationship of the individual with the environment from a perspective of alienation and entrapment, bringing forward questions about personal vulnerability within a context of social and, perhaps it could be said, existential aggression. This landscape of ideas also opens spaces where the consequences of or the reaction produced by such hostility become actual effects on the ‘other’, revealing their own absurdity and barbarism. A number of works find their subject in collective forms of hatred both from the side of those in protest against repressive social forces and the same organized government war machines crushing down populations and peer rivals.

The exploration of the issue of hostility brings forward in the case of some of the participant artists a more humorous or cynical ‘take’ where victim and perpetrator become caricatures or archetypes of actual personal or collective drama, extending the subject to political or anthropological comment. Sexuality and the primal is certainly one of the undercurrents in the exhibition: phallic aggression, human vulnerability, or the interwoven relationship between the emotional and the sexual are palpable subjects in some of the works.

Overall the show aims to present a polarization of artworks which focus on the one hand on a dramatic or darker vision of the issue of hostility both within the individual and the institutional or collective, and the lighter version of the similar human drama where political issues or human insecurity and frustration are reduced to humorous commentary or an statement of impotence against inescapable human nature.

Program of events:

Sunday 6th of March from 3 to 6.30pm: Performance ‘Alice through the looking glass’ by Grassy Noel, followed by screenings of films by Pablo Saura & Tom Cardew

Thursday 10th of March from 3 to 5pm: Steph Goodger: Talks about the 1871 Paris Commune, early photojournalism and her work around these subjects. Also: John Flannery in conversation with Stella Winskell-Moore

Friday 11th of March from 7pm: Rodrigo B. Camacho: Interactive performance; emergent system (indeterminate duration) ‘The Wolf Game- Death by Hyperstress’

Wednesday 16th of March from 3 to 5pm: Blind Plural, Artists in   conversation: François Larini, Naifei Wu, Rodrigo B. Camacho, Sara Rodrigues (NME | Artistic Director) and Gabriele Cavallo (NME | Editorial Director)

Thursday 17th of March from 1 to 4pm: Luisa Spina : ‘Small Gatherings for Big Thoughts’. Cooking participatory process. Book your place.

 gestalt1_steph_goodger_les-non-reclames_oil_on_canvas_120x180cm_2015

 

Image credits: Olivia Johnson, Owen Oppenheimer and Steph Goodger.
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