“Some people say aesthetics and politics are different. I say the best thing about aesthetics is that the politics which permeate it are totally invisible…Aesthetics are not about politics, they are politics themselves.”
Rainer Fuchs, The Authorized Viewer (Felix Gonzales-Torres, Steidl, 2016) p110
Bringing together a small group of artists whose work shows rather than tells and whose work is an exercise in the politics of aesthetics.
It is essential to understand that aesthetics are not simply an attractive addition or add-on to the surfaces of commodities, that hopes to make the ordinary appear more appealing but rather that aesthetics are a fundamental element of human life.
“Aesthetics is the way we communicate through the senses. It is the art of creating reactions without words, through the look and feel of people, places and things. Hence, aesthetics differs from entertainment that requires cognitive engagement with narrative, wordplay, or complex, intellectual allusion…Aesthetics shows rather than tells delights rather than instructs. The effects are immediate, perceptual and emotional.”
Nigel Thrift, Understanding The Material Practices of Glamour (The Affect Theory Reader, Duke University Press, 2010) p291
This brief, energetic show is an attempt to forge affective connections and entanglements between the works of Linder, Jemima Stehli, Hamish Morrow and Hilary Lloyd as a means of foregrounding the politics embedded in the aesthetic choices that each artist makes.
A SERIES OF SHOWS: # 1 Show Me Yours…(The Politics of Aesthetics) 17th September / 18th September 2021
Filet, 103 Murray Grove, London, N1 7QF filetfilet.uk
