December 2, 2017–February 17, 2018
Opening: December 1, 6pm
Walk through: December 2, 5pm
NOME
Glogauer Straße 17
10999 Berlin
Hours: Tuesday–Saturday 3–7pm
A group show curated by Paolo Cirio
NOME is pleased to present the group show Evidentiary Realism, curated by Paolo Cirio, in Berlin after its successful start in New York. The exhibition features artists engaged in investigative, forensic, and documentary work.
On display are works by Sadie Barnette, Josh Begley, James Bridle, Ingrid Burrington, Harun Farocki, Navine G. Khan-Dossos, Hans Haacke, Khaled Hafez, Jenny Holzer, Mark Lombardi, Kirsten Stolle as well as Thomas Keenan & Eyal Weizman.
The exhibition aims to articulate a particular form of realism in art that portrays and reveals evidence from complex social systems. The artworks featured explore the notion of evidence and its modes of representation.
Evidentiary Realism reflects on post-9/11 geopolitics, increasing economic inequalities, the erosion of civil rights, and environmental disasters. It builds on the renewed appreciation of the exposure of truth in the context of the cases of WikiLeaks, Edward Snowden, the Panama Papers, and the recent efforts to contend with the post-factual era.
Contemporary sharing and processing of information in an open global collaborative environment entails an amplified sense of reality. Leaks, discoveries, and facts are collectively verified and disseminated among numerous distribution networks. Techniques of presentation and engaging the public have been evolving in the same direction: through reconfiguration of media and languages, the evidence is presented in a variety of strategies and artifacts in dialogue with contemporary art practices.
Evidentiary Realism focuses on artworks that prioritize formal aspects of visual language and mediums; diverging from journalism and reportage, they strive to provoke visual pleasure and emotional responses. In the exhibition the evidence is presented through photography, film, drawing, painting, and sculpture, with strong references to art history. In particular, these artists also theoretically articulate the aesthetic, social, and documentary functions of their mediums in relation to the subject matter they investigate.
Some of the evidentiary realist works break down visibility to abstraction to underline the limits of seeing, while others use figuration or synthesis to enhance insight. The encoded information and nuanced details behind the works point to large, highly complex realities that come into focus through the factual evidence shown. Yet these enigmatic and seductive works serve as evidence of the opaque and intricate apparatus of our reality.
The process of translating investigations and documents into artworks underpins the exhibition. Such practices adopted by emerging and established artists of today can be traced to the works of Hans Haacke, Mark Lombardi, and Harun Farocki, who were some of the first artists invested in decoding complex systems of power and conveying them in bold artistic forms.
The creation of evidentiary artworks is the realism of today’s world, which is trying to control, predict, and quantify itself. Evidentiary realists examine such complexity to condemn, document, and inform through compelling artworks, giving form to a particular documentary and investigative art practice.
More information on the website of Evidentiary Realism. The exhibition will be accompanied by a publication including 16 essays by Jaroslav Andel, Sampada Aranke, Giulia Bini, Joshua Craze, Nijah Cunningham, Heather Davis, Lauren van Haaften-Schick, Natasha Hoare, Aude Launay, Susanne Leeb, Susette Min, Mary Anne Redding, Susan Schuppli, Blanca de la Torre and Nicola Trezzi about the exhibiting artists.
NOME
Founded in 2015, NOME works with international emerging and mid-career artists whose practices engage diverse disciplines and involve a broad range of media. The curated program of the gallery aims to raise critical awareness of the crucial issues facing our age.
For further information and sales inquiries, please contact Luca Barbeni or Olga Boiocchi at info [at] nomegallery.com.
For press and media inquiries, please contact Tabea Hamperl at press [at] nomegallery.com.
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