Exposition collective du 24 juin au 29 juillet
\n\u00e0 Klemms’ Berlin
\nOpening: JUN 24 from 6 \u2013 9 pm
\nCurated by Marta Santi
\navec James Bantone, Nina Childress, Chelsea Culprit, Juan Pablo Echeverri, Barbara Hammer, Aurora Kir\u00e1ly, Hein Koh, Jean-Charles de Quillacq, Elle P\u00e9rez, Emilie Pitoiset, Davide Sgambaro, Nora Turato, Dena Yago<\/p>\n
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The modern self strives in eternal longing for something. It seeks shelter in its own image, a reflection which feels safe despite its deceit, embodying a doubt that echoes the self\u2019s own fraught relationship with its appearance.<\/p>\n
One could define current times as the \u2018era of self-deception\u2019 \u2013 a subconscious state of things in which the obsessive achievement of perfection standards, driven by mimetic desires, leads to a form of self-exploitation. Self-deception becomes a cage challenging to escape, a quest for a misleading truth, an obsessive attempt to establish an ultimate, \u2018authentic\u2019 form of existence.<\/p>\n
What do we talk about when we address self-obsession? What remains with one\u2019s \u2018self\u2019 and what is projected straight back into others?<\/p>\n
Obselfed<\/em> is an exhibition that brings together artists who reflect on the concept of the \u2018self\u2019, its cohesion and its fragmentation in an imitation-driven society. The modern self is a kleptomaniac, the need to inflate its own ego through the collection of brand new personality traits transfigures into destructive ideology. Any consideration on the value of the \u2018stolen goods\u2019 (indeed, personality traits become commodities) is absent \u2013 it recedes into mere vanitas.<\/p>\n Contemporary individuality is dispersed, it backfires and turns into projection; its weakness lies in the inability to trust its own vision. The consistency of its ever-changing nature lies in the delicate harmonies that result from its convergence with the Other. Addressing the concept of identity in current times means entering a vast and intricate environment. In Obselfed<\/em> the \u2018self\u2019 becomes analysed, fragmented, compartmentalised, ironised, elevated, staged, disrupted. The invited artists \u2018activate\u2019 a series of characters that raise different social commentaries, fully embracing the paradoxes of contemporary existence. Obselfed<\/em> seeks to dismantle assumptions of our fixed subjectivity and to highlight the contemporary means of cultural self-consumption, emphatically and without nai\u0308vete\u0301; a quest for authentic individuality in an \u2018obselfed\u2019 society.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\nThe show seeks to investigate the boundaries between self-perception and the perception of others, questioning how our personalities construct themselves within slippery social stereotypes and the constant pressure of foreign sights. What we derive from these fragmented visions of our \u2018selves\u2019, and what they mean, is as much a result of an individualistic process as it is the output of a common voyeuristic tendency to spy on others.<\/p>\n
\nObselfed<\/em> is an attempt to establish a deeper discourse on self-perception by bringing together artists that address the de- and re- construction of the self, sharing an attitude of resistance towards the same anachronistic norms and taboos of our precarious culture.<\/p>\n
\nHow do we present our \u2018personas\u2019 to the outer world? Where do we draw the line between intimacy and disclosure?
\nIn the strategic process of identity building, the larcenous tendencies of individuals seem to be entangled with a common devotion to oddity \u2013 a need to elevate the oddest characteristics of ourselves and turn their perception upside down: what makes us different no longer isolates us but rather validates us as part of a community.
\nIt is a fascinating defence mechanism; whatever used to be hidden is now overly shared in order to find its validation.<\/p>\n
\nIn this framework, the whole gallery space is involved, from the main room to the office spaces and showroom. The presence of works ubiquitously inhabiting the space is thought to convey a feeling of overcrowding, of reiteration \u2013 it is an \u2018obsessive\u2019 curatorial setting, turning the gallery into an echo chamber where the works resonate in different corners as affirmations of restless states of mind.<\/p>\n