For texts on the individual artworks's exhibited click here.
Most of us had some kind of timeout over the past months, which have been unprecedented and challenging. A timeout forced upon us by a pandemic, a timeout that constrained us to live our lives in different ways, a timeout to reflect upon the essence of our human existence, whose equilibrium seems to shift out of sync.
In an e-mail exchange with a gallery artist we discussed how the perception of times changes in extreme scenarios like the current one – if time expands or condenses. I assume it does both. On the one hand, it feels like we are living a moment of densification and concentration. Of immense inner and outer tension with all the lives, jobs and opportunities lost. On the other hand, time diffuses and becomes more available. It gives us the chance to do things calmer, maybe more measured and considerate, which also opens up opportunities.
It is certainly a period when many aspects of our life, and possibly our future, are put to test. A time of change, and hopefully a time of renewal. It was difficult at times, and still is, to imagine what role art would play in these testing times. After all, change and renewal is what art is about.
We have all witnessed a lot of the online activity during the lockdown. Some of it good, a lot of it was too predictable or in the grain of “now is the time we need art for inspiration and comfort”. We always need art for that purpose. At the moment other needs are more important, family, friends. Jobs, conversations, nature, love, equality – you name it.
Nonetheless, what we do best as a gallery is show art. That’s why we joined the sea of online activity to keep the gallery and its message on the radar. Every week we featured an art work that circled around the theme of above mentioned change and renewal. All works were chosen from our stock, to be united physically in an exhibition at the gallery once it reopens.
So here it is – a short yet multifaceted story about change and renewal told by twelve art works posted during the lockdown. Essentially a summary of the gallery’s TIMEOUT.