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22/9/2005

Only Minutes To Live

temporarycontemporary, London

Group exhibition

curated by Klega and Jeremy Deadman

The thought of death is therapeutic: it informs the mind: there is nothing to do when past and future disappear. It is therapeutic labour. No, really, there is nothing to do. This instant is plenitude in which we dwell without duration. No past and no future to consider: big and small, important and unimportant, the burdens of the past and worries of the future, the illness of the soul revelling in hollow desires, abate suddenly. Stepping out of duration reveals the vacuity of values, being 'dead' to this world. We are able to suspend judgments about all things.

A stranger to this world casts his eyes on the world for the first time. An experiment in the laboratory of life: a turn of the mind, sometimes inadvertently, reveals the comedy of the everyday. Pyrrhonic laughter erupts in the mad busy hustle of human affairs as seen from the moon. The distance levels the dimensions of the significant and insignificant, the grave and the trivial, rich and poor, lucky and unlucky: everything is small and ridicules - it is the ridicule of every value.

It is eminent hubris: touching the instant and bringing back crumbs of plenitude into duration: the cartoon brings the world into perspective; the world is a speck of dirt impassively examined by the pure sharp eye, that sees the world like for the first time.

The artist dwells in hubris as the intermediate messenger between the world and the instant. He has to shed his burden and worries to move rapidly between the levels of the mind. Art shares the values of the everyday compassionately but sets up business in the blink of an eye. Its dispassionate gaze is laughter, unbearable, sarcastic and irreverent - but not venomous, malicious or vengeful. Only the instant secures the freedom of the mind to embrace indifference, the art to judge properly - that there is no value except in and as the instant, the blink of an eye.

To seize the instant has a peculiar economy. The quick-footed line touches the instant in a flourish of laughter. The economy of pen and paper is the quick-witted snipe at the world-upside-down. It is the mobility of the instant: travelling with hand luggage, light-footed, always ready, vigilant, attentive; a hunter of the instant, an uncanny discipline of the presence of the mind.

In 'Only Minutes To Live' we present some vigilant observations of 'worldly' affairs - snapshots of pomposity and fantastical values ascribed to things. We see the world from the moon and from the perspective of a snail, or a horsefly, or a pigeon-dropping hurtling fatefully from high in the sky towards the receding hair-line of a professor of finest arts.

This show is about dwelling in the minutes of suspended burdens and worries - just dwell and watch...

Artists:
David Burrows
Jeremy Deadman
Patricia Ellis
Matt Franks
Klega
Cedar Lewisohn
Anne Redmond
Bob and Roberta Smith
Image: Patricia Ellis, 'Merle Haggard with Geraniums'

Private View: Friday 23 September 6.30-late

temporarycontemporary
2nd Floor, Atlantic House
The Old Seager Distillery
Brookmill Road - London
Open Sat -Sun 12-6pm

stampa

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