This exhibition will present recent works from six emerging international artists
Displacement:
(1) The act of displacing
(2) Physics – the weight or volume of liquid displaced by an object submerged or floating in it
Maths – the distance measured in a particular direction from a reference point
Verb: To displace
i. to move (something) from its usual place
ii. to remove (someone) from a post or position of authority
Displacement in the current vocabulary implies a physical move from one place to another – as if the act of displacing was to move (something) from its usual place, or to remove (someone) from a post or position of authority. In substance, a body dislocated.
The interrelation between a word and its meaning is essentially a comfortable and useful modern construction. Despite the banal and repeated question – why this word has this meaning and not another -the mind seems set on a certain type of specific logic. However, this is not necessarily the truth. This exhibition twists and plays around the free association of words and meaning, an association without any restrictions. In fact, the connotation of the act of a physical displacement is deliberately displaced from the physical condition to a mental state. Thus, the possibility of movement exists only in our mind, transporting the viewer to new worlds of imagination, to places and feelings once forgotten, where the individual is free to explore creativity unfettered by rules and convention. This becomes a game between the viewer and what they perceive. The overlapping realities confuse the eye and drag the spectator to reflect upon physical movement and mental change.
Through the very ambivalent relationship between movement and stativity Alexandra Hughes plays with the interpretation of space, challenging the viewer to fill in the narrative. Pietro Spoto, through his site-specific work forces the instinctive physical displacement to enter a more substantial mental state of dislocation, playing with interrupted surfaces and theatrical inventions. Rinat Kotler similarly explores questions of truth and theatricality, using the imagination of her participants to extrapolate from given scenarios to different, and sometimes dark, realities. Kala Newman’s commissioned work also calls on the imagination, transposing the viewer to a fairy tale world where things and acts are free from any constrictions. The fairytale association continues with Carolina Vasquez’s animation which shows the possibilities inherent in every person to replace their quotidian reality with something magical. Finally, during the opening night, Carla Esperanza Tommasini will present a deceptive reading of a series of images which explores an unstable relationship between man and nature.
This group show, featuring international emerging artists, includes site specific, newly commissioned work as well as a participatory performance to take place on the opening night.
List of artists:
Alexandra Hughes
Rinat Kotler
Kala Newman
Pietro Spoto
Carla Esperanza Tommasini/ Elisa D’Ippolito
Carolina Vasquez
Curated by Juliette Rizzi and Eleanor Clayton
