27.06.09 – 04.10.09
Fragile – Fields of Empathy, tour, Musée d’Art Moderne de Saint-Étienne, Saint-Étienne, Accademia D’Ungleria in Roma, Italy, Daejeon Museum of Art, Daejeon, South Korea.
Curated by Lorand Hegyi.
Artists:
Ruth Barabash, Massimo Bartolini, Frauke Boggasch, Marina Bolla, Rebecca Bournigault, Yves Bresson, Davide Cantoni, Alice Cattaneo, Loris Cecchini, Dae-Jin Choi, Tessa Manon den Uyl, Karin Fauchard, Roland Flexner, Andrea Fogli, Kevin Francis Gray, Carlos Garaicoa, Francesco Gennari, Ugo Giletta, Paolo Grassino, Han Myoung-Ok, Siobhan Hapaska, Hiraki Sawa, Kei Takemura, Kimsooja, Bernd Koller, Jan Kopp, Denica Lehocka, Eric Manigaud, Dacia Manto, Carla Mattii, Sabrina Mezzaqui, Helen Mirra, Liliana Moro, Vik Muniz, , Sirous Namazi, Isabel Nolan, Marina Paris, Pavel Pepperstein, Marina Perez Simao, Francoise Petrovitch, Laszlo Laszlo Revesz, Anila Rubiku, Fabian Seiz, Francesco Sena, Barthelemy Toguo, Paul Wallach, Lois Weinberger, Yee Sookyung.
The FRAGILE exhibition presents a selection of various artistic statements based on questioning the poetical potential of a new, intimate, immediate approach of human experiences in micro-communities and micro-histories without any kind of universalistic legitimization by external, supra-personal – mythological, religious, ideological or political – value systems or hierarchical determinations. This anti-monumental, anti-hierarchical, anti-formalist, participative, empathic and open attitude creates a new kind of sensitive relation between different systems of organisation of life and work. It animates sensitive, emotionally rich human situations in which latent capacities of generating values inside of micro-communities are possible. Fragility seems to be an esthetical and ethical entity connected with solidarity, empathy, capability of participation rather than a negative quality, a sign of weakness. Fragility is a metaphor for participation, giving, sharing, empathy.
The FRAGILE exhibition presents about 40 international artists whose activity manifests a subtle, poetical, intimate, anthropological vision on contemporary life experience and whose work neglects any form of monumentalism or rigid formalism. Instead of rigorous absolutism through formal structures, the diverse methodology of these artists reflects subtle happenings and micro-narratives in the unlimited complexity of everyday life. They don’t reveal any expansionistic or moralistic strategies, neither any external legitimacy based on ideology or religion – they rather celebrate the quality of empathy, solidarity, tolerance and the capacity of emotional participation and sentimental intensity. This fine, subversively poetic approach to so-called “micro-realities” creates new, sensitive constellations in the complex real context of “the concreteness of concrete selves” (Arthur C. Danto).