This exhibition examines the evolution of imagery and language in what has been described as our panoptic era. While its roots are grounded in the concepts that arose from the 1948 novel by George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four, which clearly reflected the historical background of totalitarianism, ... Read more
This exhibition examines the evolution of imagery and language in what has been described as our panoptic era. While its roots are grounded in the concepts that arose from the 1948 novel by George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four, which clearly reflected the historical background of totalitarianism, this exhibition attempts to distance itself from this source by considering forms of surveillance and control today, where an all-powerful apparatus as described in Orwell’s work appears overly simplistic. The expansion of the scope of media, both through information technology innovations and connectivity, has shifted the frontier delineating public and private. Stereotypical notions, such as the ubiquitous eye of “Big Brother” and CCTV channels constantly recording the streetscape, seem less relevant as we enter a new age of alienation. It is now as if the objects and ideas we desire control us more deeply than those that Nineteen Eighty-Four’s protagonist Winston Smith feared, and ultimately surrendered to, controlled him. In addition, the acceptability of constant self-exposure entices us into what can be called the “participatory panopticon.” As a result, the artists represented in this exhibition, all of whom live and work in Europe and the United States, continue to question the effects of surveillance systems on the subject, but also the possible subversive usage by the subject, in a variety of media – including painting, drawing, sculpture, photography, video and installation.
May 26:
5 PM – 6 PM | ARTIST TALK
with Nicolas Grospierre & Kobas Laksa, Dariusz Kowalski, Rachel Owens, Florian & Michaël Quistrebert, Flora Watzal and Clemens von Wedemeyer. Reservations required!
6 PM – 8 PM | OPENING RECEPTION
Official opening by Claudia Schmied, Austrian Federal Minister of Education, Arts and Culture.
