At the same time, light that creates reflections, abstraction, opacity, and shadow abounds in contemporary art. Some of it has migrated into Escaping Transparency in the expansive exhibition space at the MAK. This light is non-transparent, it is refracted and operates obliquely. It is relational light, a sort of trickster light, it is light that goes on and off. It is light as a carrier of commercial messages but also more obscure indications as to when and how something is visible and not. It is the light of reflection and endless reproduction in a condition where beingvisible is considered equal to being or to existing at all.
Perhaps Birchall is right when he says that each era gets the transparency it deserves. It is unclear what that will mean when, in the future, life is more likely to occur on planets with two small suns creating a saturated photosynthesis that makes vegetation black. For now it might be the moment to exchange the “right to privacy” for “the right to opacity.” We remember Eduard Glissant’s powerful call for the latter, which arose from colonial subjects’ refusal to be totally knowable and therefore able to be controlled by the colonizers. Here opacity is not the same as obscurity but simply that which cannot be reduced and contained.
Participating Artists
Pablo Accinelli (Buenos Aires)
Doug Ashford (New York)
Claire Barclay (Glasgow)
Rana Begum (London)
Elena Damiani (Lima/Copenhagen)
Shezad Dawood (London)
Annika Eriksson (Stockholm/Berlin)
Matias Faldbakken (Oslo)
Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian (Tehran)
Ane Hjort Guttu (Oslo)
Tom Holert (Berlin)
Philippe Parreno (Paris)
Amalia Pica (Buenos Aires/London)
Bik Van der Pol (Rotterdam)
Yelena Popova (Moscow/Nottingham)
Walid Raad (Beirut/New York)
Haegue Yang (Seoul/Berlin)
Curator
Maria Lind, Director, Tensta Konsthall, Stockholm
Symposium
A mini-symposium convened by Tom Holert and Brian Kuan Wood, with Céline Condorelli, Metahaven, and Natascha Sadr Haghighian.
Sat, 13.6.2015, 2:30–6 p.m.
Funding