"Non-knowing makes boundaries cryptic, mysterious. Exact science limits the world to hard tangible atoms"
It is increasingly being realised that human knowledge is running up against its limits. For instance, quantum theory has proved that matter behaves differently when observed (does matter have consciousness?) or why are subatomic particles actually entangled? The popularity of neuroscience also seems unstoppable, but where in the brain are our memories located? That answer has not been found after a century of research either, because: perhaps memory exists outside our bodies, non-locally. Whaaat?!
The fact that we experience the world makes it there.
Make it beautiful.
~RELANDSCAPE
Although intangible values are more difficult to establish within a framework, to measure, imagination and intuition are inseparable from our being. And although today's view of life tends to focus on the expedient, nothing that is is completely rationally transparent to us. But neither is the reverse; fully enchanted. So both views will have to be maintained, a synthesis of the pragmatic order and the Dionysian intoxication, at the intersection of reasoning and ecstasy, necessity versus freedom.
Do not limit sensation but de-limit understanding: a new enchantment will emerge. Re-relate to one's own thinking; don't believe everything you think and re-conceive the actions that lead to an illusory life of progress through consumption and growth. Enter into dialogue with the inexplicable, rediscover the mystical. If only to try to be as unbiased as possible in the world and experience freedom by sharing freedom and leaving room for other interpretations.
[24]
If art has a meaning, that message is not fixed. Various parameters like time, place, space or cultural environment also play a role in creating that meaning and are changeable, agile. In any case, those were my experiences with the exhibitions that took place in Atelier 21 last year. As a gallerist, it was a surprising sensation that the maker, the work and the viewer relate to each other in a mobile dynamic. That the process of making and perceiving influence each other and thus the work on display becomes flexible was a fascinating experience.
The maker creates an object or thought from imagination and exhibits it with creative enterprise (and some fearlessness; for its outcome or reaction to it is not fixed).
The beholders, the audience, make the artwork come to life by drawing their attention to it, projecting their consciousness onto it, and thereby give it meaning. What meaning that is is irrelevant, the willingness to do so is. I imagine myself as such that the work itself is a portal that adapts to those willing to enter it.
Nor does the work of art so much show something new as it places a familiar and archetypal worldview in a new light, breaks a pattern of thought. It creates a new paradigm, a different outlook. The seemingly rational certainties, which often serve as a framework for perception, change. The aesthetics of rediscovering.
In short, good example follows; to close the year, I share with the exhibition [24] my attempts to reintroduce an enchanted view into this 21st century.
In addition to forty photographs, I present my poetry pamphlet Somnium and give multimedia content to the exhibition with musical improvisations.
[this slideshow contains photos from the series 21-24]
Atelier 21
Kraanplein 22
4301 CH Zierikzee
The Netherlands
www.atl21.nl