A Setting

by | 4 Apr, 2018

A setting space of an exhibition is often a liminal space where place and time come together.

These two variables make a crack in the experience of audience who is called to live hic et nunc, here and now. Following Heidegger’s existentialist philosophy, the human being lives always in a condition where time and space are a constant state of life. During the exhibition, time and space coexist at the same moment, although this is not true for the artist since the time for him/her is over. The artist’s time happens during the creation thus his/her hic et nunc is in the past. What the artists do during the exhibition time is create a new place zone for a new time of experience where art is involved in a new event.  In the same way, the artwork is subordinated to the same criterion since it is a human product. Therefore, we always move inside of this liminal area, in which it is possible to have a perfect empirical vision and experience of the field.

Assuming the vision as a form of cognition, we achieve perceptively the setting space as a combined place of different art practices. Each work of each artist is a personal view of time and space zone, a special universe where they explore, by their own perception, the binomial time/place. They play a role in this exhibition setting their works in the space as little constellations, metamorphosis of time and place, but they are also imaginary maps of introspection. The viewer is called to make an emotional journey across the history of each artist whether they are imaginary spaces, real Irish landscapes or everyday urban space.

All artists in the show have lived and worked in and around Dublin. Their works talk about their lived experience, and about Ireland: a country surrounded by the sea that is a special kind of medium, due to its perfect isolation, its detachment from the social, its sense of self-enclosure, and, above all, its opening onto a visual plenitude that is somehow heightened and pure.

Text  by Valeria Ceregini

Imogen Brady, Cará DonagheyMegan Robinson, Dáire McEvoy, A Setting (18th–21st July 2018, Pallas Projects/Studios, Dublin IE).