| K3 | Events |
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| K3 | Events |
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'Oneself as Another’ with Joel Croxson, Luzia Hürzeler, Sam Porritt Saturday 12th February 2011 7pm - till late show continues until Sunday 20th February (view by appointment) Closing event Sunday 20th February 6-9pm with Art&Argument starting at 5pm. Chaired by Aoife Rosenmeyer. Debaters - Hubert Bächler, Claudia Groeflin, Garrett Nelson, Nadia Schneider http://artandargument.blogspot.com/ ‘Oneself as Another’ The exhibition takes its title from Paul Ricoeur’s book of the same name, ‘Oneself as Another’, a book I have turned to from time to time for the best part of a decade, with differing degrees of success. As soon as I was asked to propose an exhibition for the K3 I knew that I wanted Joel and Luzia to be in the exhibition too, although it took me some time to fully understand why. Three is a useful number for many reasons. In this instance, as with painting, the triptych allows the mind to go to places the diptych cannot reach. A couple of things encourage comparison; the mind centres on the things themselves and seeks similarity and difference. With three things, be they artists, paintings or points on a map, a territory can be described – a position formed, each corner supporting the other. I had the good fortune to study with Joel and Luzia, first with Luzia at Chelsea College of Art and then with Joel at the Royal Academy Schools. My first encounter with Paul Ricoeur’s book was as a student. At that time the imperative to ‘break it [oneself] down’ was a common refrain. It is said that the ‘scientific eye’ necessarily separates the scientist from their subject and that the pursuit of facts deadens the scientist’s ability to empathise. Stories are legion of anthropologists losing their way. If they were not blinded or bound by their own histories then they were misled by their subjects ‘acting out’. Either way they saw only what they wanted to see, specifically, what they had set out to find. ‘Lemon Juice’ (2002) dates from Luzia’s time at Chelsea, and can be interpreted as a potted history of the world. It also articulates the bind of self-reference with supreme economy. Maybe ‘breaking down’ or ‘dismantling’ the self provides a way out? If we know what we are made of then perhaps we can recognise and potentially master our prejudices? For artists there is an obvious draw to seeing ‘oneself as another’. For one, seeing what others see in our work is to close the gap that Duchamp christened the; ‘personal art coefficient’. While we associate Duchamp with serene indifference and strategy, Ricoeur posits that viewing ‘oneself as another/another as oneself’ might lead the way to a deeper understanding of the golden rule, ‘do unto others as you would have them do unto you’. Since first encountering Joel’s work I have seen it as the embodiment of the current condition of painting. Spontaneous yet tentative, it manages to be both hopeful and skeptical at the same time. Perhaps consciousness of its own limitations is what makes painting the most academic of the visual arts. That because a painting will always be art and cannot expand the concept of art (hence the death of painting) - the burden of the painter is the history of painting and how he or she furthers that history. Simultaneously painting might be understood as the ‘perfect’ art form. Museums testify to the fact that oil on canvas makes for a durable commodity, as for the artist, knowledge that there are rules to play by and that there is a single space to contest offers some comfort - long live painting! It is said that we are living in a time of doubt and that to make art of any kind is to defy the many reasons why we should not. To some extent all art constitutes an assertion, with some artists establishing a bridgehead that they spend a lifetime substantiating. To a lesser or greater extent, the artists in this exhibition choose to go ‘back to the drawing board’ over and over again, delving down into doubt to pull out something each time. The occurrence of an artwork being the consequence of a rational mind making an irrational move (or vice versa?). Sam Porritt, Zurich 2011
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