With a clear focus on the production of works that preserve the materiality of an art object, the authors coming together in this project exhibit – in the totality of their work – a phenomenal experience of the contemporary world that we know all too well. Namely, going from work to work, what we observe in these objects – covering a range of artistic media and means of expression – is time itself, discretely preserved and presented behind every explicit symbolism or implicit meaning of the work – for we do not see or experience meaning, we arrive to it through interpretation or explication of authors intentions, both of which are profoundly inessential to the aesthetic experience of a true work of art. Thus time is not the meaning of these works, nor is it a symbol which would put us on the path of rediscovering it as meaningful. Something else is at play here. Painting or pictorial representation here is a measure of distance (from the world), a sculpture is a vector… a demonstration of our (lack) of direction, or of a movement which is at the same time a reflex and a volitional act of expression, a minimum of which only establishes our mere presence without the ability or will to do anything more than just that. Yet it is all in reference to time which we do not observe but only experience as we blur our image of the (real, immediately present) world; time is more than immediate and beyond intentionality, so we must approach it from the standpoint of (mere) aesthetic appreciation. It is beyond composition, though composition helps, just as it is suggested by the ”reboot” project poster. Everything we do is about time, but in art objects this fact is revealed to us in terms of an aesthetic situation, something that is not present in our daily life as such, and that is why one is able to appreciate an art object as a je-ne-sais-quoi, beyond limitations and enclosures of critique, analysis or interpretation but as a specific form of design. Between something and nothing, visual, virtual, actual and iconoclastic, imagining time as a situation is something that makes this exhibition phenomenally nostalgic, even though in a profoundly spectacular way. Ready-mades, transpositions, installations, digitalities,… all seemingly negate the presence of ‘conventional art object’ even though it is these new elements that are not present. That is the difference between being present and being presented. This is the case for Röllins and Hauris mutational objects as well as for ‘transubstantiated’ images of Filip Radić and John Miličić, while Kauz-Zeller and Schwittlick make this point even more explicit. The new and contemporary is enclosed, reduced back to a medium that has seemingly lost its meaning, but precisely through this loss we are able to observe the nostalgic, the outlook not oriented towards the oil painting or sculpture as such, but to a time which makes them all possible. Thus, a reboot, through the looking glass of meaningless media in order to recapture the becoming of a work of art as an object in the world. Aside from time, another nostalgic aspect of this reboot is the concept of connection, of being in some essential relation to that which we have (left) behind us and thus a connection that is not reducible to a set of discreet images but rather as belonging to a process of becoming. I would suggest to consider that nothing is in hiding in this exhibition – the title is already quite explicit about it – and, if we rid of interpretation – not being against it as some would say, but rather by working around it, in circumlocution, as a design – and look, or try to experience something beyond meaning or critical inquiry, a challenging notion of engaging with time itself becomes apparent as an aesthetic paradox embedded in our nostalgic contemporaneity.
Curated by Leandra Agazzi and Miran Blažek
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