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Indepth Arts News:
"What Am I Doing Here? (A Political Exhibition)"
2003-06-03 until 2003-07-30
Esso Gallery
New York, NY,
USA United States of America
What Am I Doing Here? is originally the title of a collection of essays by writer Bruce Chatwin, but here it is a philosophical question that we have been asking ourselves a lot lately. On September 11 the "civilized" world realized that everyone could be "collateral damage" in somebody else’s war. Violence provokes violence and in this time muscle and money seem to prevail.
We are all deeply shocked by the conflicts around us and by the wartime in which we are living. We are against the war, but moreover we are upset with the stupidity and the lack of dignity that rules humanity, with those who want to teach ignorance and fear to their fellow creatures and are governing our lives with arrogance and violence.
Already two countries have been destroyed and with them their culture (our culture) and their art. This involves us and demonstrates that who ever is governing this world is not interested in people, in their dignity, in their culture and least of all in art.
The poor physical and mental shape of this world concerns us personally and we feel a profound need to say something. This is not a call for a political show in an institutional sense, we think that art stands in a place opposite politics; it's closer to anarchy, a free form of expression, and the aesthetic of culture.
To answer the question that titles the exhibition What Am I Doing Here? We would like to show exactly what we are doing during this unhappy time. Art.
Photographic works by Slater Bradley, Curtis Mitchell, Nzingah Muhammad, Florio Puenter and Francesco Simeti; sculptural works by Jay Batlle, Rita McBride and Maurizio Pellegrin; paintings and works on paper by Randy Moore, Glen Rubsamen, Nicolas Rule and Luca Vitone; video by Barbara Pollack
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