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4/3/2003

Extra

Swiss Institute - Old location, New York

HOW MANY EXTRA LAYERS CAN WE GRAFT ONTO REALITY BEFORE IT COLLAPSES?

featuring the work of:
Virginie Barre, Olivier Blanckart, Stephane Dafflon, Wim Delvoye, Daniel Firman, Fischli/Weiss, Sylvie Fleury, Gianni Motti, Bruno Peinado, Stephane Sautour and Roman Signer

curated by Marc-Olivier Wahler, Artistic Director of the SI

In a new realm of gliding over, in and between the surfaces and folds of reality, art takes on diverse forms to reveal the extreme elasticity of the real.
Art does not attempt to develop new worlds or new platforms outside reality. Here, with EXTRA, we see how art and artists contribute to the densification of the real : to pull stretch and layer reality. The art of EXTRA constitutes a movement, an energy, a constant oscillation which serves to shake up our interpretive system. It is the pump, which dilates and contracts our reality.

EXTRA, a book exploring the layers of the real, will accompany the exhibition. Twenty-eight artists are each contributing original 8-12 page visual essays in color. Participating artist include, among others, Olaf Breuning, Gelatin, Christian Jankowski, Ugo Rondinone and Jim Shaw with texts by Olivier Mosset, Bob Nickas, Marc-Olivier Wahler and a correspondance by physicists David Deutsch and Seth Lloyd. Published by the Swiss Institute x{2013} Contemporary Art with Christoph Merian Verlag.

Is there something "outside" reality?
Is reality like elastic? To what extent can we pull and stretch it, and will it break? How many extra layers can we graft onto reality before it may collapse?
These questions define the core ideas of the EXTRA exhibition.

EXTRA does not attempt to suggest answers to these questions, but rather, it proposes a project of stratifying reality, working with artists who continually question the limits of the real. EXTRA attempts to probe the nature of art today in relation to reality.

No longer is the extraterrestrial portrayed as an hysterical little green man. He now takes human form, slipping from unremarkably normal to ever-so-slightly suspicious. Gliding between the spaces of the real, his next frontier is a territory without location.

Away from the notion of the interstice: a common way to define contemporary art. A notion, (not far from the point sublime of the surrealists, an in between, or an offshore platform), that has the benefit of grounding the idea of the indefinable in a domain that was reassuringly definable: a geographic point. In this new realm of gliding over, in and between the surfaces of reality, the world no longer seems like a series of points forming lines. Rather, it is manifested in a series of tangent planes, all at once forming and traversing reality's layers.

Art takes on the diverse forms of reality in order to reveal its extreme elasticity. It glides over the visible and exposes the limitless number of layers and strata.

Here, with EXTRA, we will see how art and artists contribute to the densification of the real, to complexify reality. Art does not attempt to develop new worlds or new platforms outside of reality. It constitutes a movement, an energy, a constant oscillation which serves to shake up our interpretive system. It is the pump, which dilates and contracts reality.

Image: DANIEL FIRMAN, A new work made in New York and based on his sculptures Gathering, (illustrations: Gathering I, 1999)

SWISS INSTITUTE - CONTEMPORARY ART
495 Broadway 3rd floor / New York NY 10012
t: 212 925 2035 x 13 / f: 212 925 2040

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