How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare
Curated by Raúl Zamudio
Monterrey, México. May 15, 2014
How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare is a group exhibition whose title cites Joseph Beuys’ watershed 1965 performance by the same name. Like Beuys’ performance in which he “explained” artworks to a dead hare in the gallery where he enacted his piece, the exhibition presents works that question the art object’s ontology and the politics of spectatorship via diverse media including photography, video, painting, sculpture, work-on-paper, installation, performance, and sound and olfactory works.
Dominika Ksel’s interactive Untitled (2012), for example, manifests in the interiority of the spectator. Similar to Lygia Clark’s Sensorial Mask (1967), which was worn over the spectator's head and blocked external perception in order to trigger self-awareness and reflection, Ksel’s piece is a kind of rave of the mind; for its optical and audio ecstasy of light and sound within the cranium proceeds from the inside to the outside rather than the other way around. Through this radical reconfiguration of art and its consumption, of object and subject, Ksel's work shares an affinity with what Antonin Artaud stated about his Theatre of Cruelty: “it is through the skin that metaphysics must be made to re-enter our minds.”
Monterrey, México. May 15, 2014
How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare is a group exhibition whose title cites Joseph Beuys’ watershed 1965 performance by the same name. Like Beuys’ performance in which he “explained” artworks to a dead hare in the gallery where he enacted his piece, the exhibition presents works that question the art object’s ontology and the politics of spectatorship via diverse media including photography, video, painting, sculpture, work-on-paper, installation, performance, and sound and olfactory works.
Dominika Ksel’s interactive Untitled (2012), for example, manifests in the interiority of the spectator. Similar to Lygia Clark’s Sensorial Mask (1967), which was worn over the spectator's head and blocked external perception in order to trigger self-awareness and reflection, Ksel’s piece is a kind of rave of the mind; for its optical and audio ecstasy of light and sound within the cranium proceeds from the inside to the outside rather than the other way around. Through this radical reconfiguration of art and its consumption, of object and subject, Ksel's work shares an affinity with what Antonin Artaud stated about his Theatre of Cruelty: “it is through the skin that metaphysics must be made to re-enter our minds.”
