Secret Societies

Secret Societies

Entrepôt Lainé
7 rue Ferrère
F-33000 Bordeaux
France
www.bordeaux.fr

Man has always been fascinated with secret societies and their clandestine rites, their covert knowledge, and exclusive circle of members. Secret Societies have existed almost as long as society itself. The character of secret societies ranges from harmless brotherhoods to powerful associations with anything but altruistic financial and political objectives. Particularly in times of crisis, secret societies provide surrogate values for the prevailing political, social and technological systems of order. The exhibition “Secret Societies. To Know, To Dare, To Will, To Keep Silence” deals with the general theme of secret societies through the prism of contemporary art in the current context of media super-exposure—from WikiLeaks to Credit Rating Agencies (CRA), just to quote two current examples. Artists have always been fascinated by the unknown and the occult. But unlike journalists who are mainly focused on investigating present-day news, artists work around the mechanisms of the secret and are better equipped to question the very limits of the ideology of transparency in our era of super-exposure.

The main goal of the exhibition is not to render visible what is invisible nor to uncover secret conspiracies but to highlight through a wide variety of artworks, certain questions raised by the sudden and recent outbreak of visibility on the part of secret societies. It is through the paradox that secrets are only secrets if they are communicated, yet disappear as soon as they are out, that this representative selection of artworks relates to secret societies and to society at large.

Artists Kenneth Anger, Art & Language, Dan Attoe, Abel Auer, Jean-Luc Blanc, Armin Boehm, Cris Brodahl, Steve Claydon, Aaron Curry, Enrico David, Brice Dellsperger, Kaye Donachie, Gardar Eide Einarsson, Tim Ellis, Matias Faldbakken, Gretchen Faust, Simone Gilges, Goldin+Senneby, Julian Göthe, Eva Grubinger, Uwe Henneken, Benedikt Hipp, Karl Holmqvist, Jenny Holzer, Jonathan Horowitz, Rashid Johnson, Edward Kay, Joachim Koester, Terence Koh, Donghee Koo, Bernd Krauss, Skafte Kuhn, Elad Lassry, Gabriel Lester, Goshka Macuga, Jill Magid, Duncan Marquiss, Fabian Marti, Alex Müller, David Noonan, Rupert Norfolk, Matthew Ronay, Markus Schinwald, Sean Snyder, Jim Shaw, Jennifer Tee, Suzanne Treister, Luca Vitone, Ulla von Brandenburg, Carl Michael von Hausswolff et Michael Esposito, Cerith Wyn Evans, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Lisa Yuskavage, Tobias Zielony

Complete information and press release here:
www.capc-bordeaux.fr/en/program/secret-societies

Curators Cristina Ricupero and Alexis Vaillant.

Audio-guide From Plato to WikiLeaks, a brief history of secret societies written by Gary Lachman one should absolutely listen to during the visit!

Catalogue Secret Societies. To Know, To Dare, To Will, To Keep Silence. Edited by Cristina Ricupero, Alexis Vaillant, and Max Hollein. Preface by Max Hollein and Charlotte Laubard. Texts by Michael Bracewell, Ina Blom, Gary Lachman, Jan Verwoert, and a dialogue between Cristina Ricupero and Alexis Vaillant. German, French and English edition, 256 pages, 150 illustrations, Snoeck publisher, Cologne 2011, ISBN 978-3-940953-82-7.

Secret Societies. To Know, To Dare, To Will, To Keep Silence is organised by the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt in collaboration with the CAPC Museum of Contemporary Art, Bordeaux.

Image above:
(C) Design : Sanghon Kim