Alex Da Corte, Bas van den Hurk, Ed Fornieles, Indriķis Ģelzis,
Jacolby Satterwhite , Jonny Niesche, Justin Lieberman , Karla Black,
Lucy Kim, Magali Reus, Patrick Hill, Philipp Timischl, Ry Rocklen,
Takahiro Iwasaki, Yngve Holen
Text by Domenico de Chirico
It is generally held that when faced with a complex and heterogeneous work – as in the case of Proustian Recherche – even though it may be surprising, one should consider that only a very fertile cultural milieu can make it possible. Everything revolves around the recherche du temps perdu and given that it has been lost, it does not really matter whether it is about inner time or external time. The place that hosts this time can only be reached through the techniques of “seeing through” and of “probing the depths.” It is, in fact, an art made of a deep feeling, of analogies revealing the essence of things, of sudden inspiration, of interiority and temporal transcendence, in search of the lost sensation.
The structure of Wholesome Environment is essentially based on the Lost Time-Time retrieved binary and tends to overcome it. Understanding, therefore, what time is composed of in order to try to escape its course is fundamental. This retrieved time outside of time is still a time; indeed it is timein its purest essence. And the environment, in which this retrieved time persists, is spontaneous, and what it aspires to is life itself awakened by involuntary memory.
Seeing as how spectators will be transported into an extra-temporal and multiform reality that will allow them to escape the present and enjoy the essence of things outside of canonical time pronounced by clocks, it is hoped that they will experience a wonderful feeling of “happiness.” The works on display play with this circle of life, continually trying to find the most raw and true sensation exhibited in its nakedness, exposed to a chronology that shies away – the incipit of which is repeatedly stolen. Perhaps that temps perdu that Marcel Proust wants to retrieve is precisely this and perhaps there is no height or health to reach in order to attain the aforementioned “happiness” (the title of the exhibition is intentionally sarcastic).
This environment is therefore the world of the strongest and most corporeal, the freshest and most genuine sensations and its bowels are imbued with them.
A circular form is the composition of: the mise-en-scène by Alexis Da Corte, between states of illusion, recessed neurological connections and comedy; Bas Van Den Hurk and the oscillating relationship between autonomy and heteronomy creates worlds between idiosyncrasies, dynamism and multifacetedness; immersive simulation logic and reactive propensity to the movement of information in Ed Fornieles's work; Indriķis Ģelzis between the opening and the limit, the perimeter and the spill; Combining 3D animation and live action, Jacolby Satterwhite's work explores the themes of memory and personal history in a dreamlike virtual environment; Jonny Niesche explores the expanded field of painting and abstraction through a specific aesthetic and cosmological vision; the intimate vision that predominates in Justin Lieberman's work, where, as the artist states, “My work is a place where capitalism goes to die”; the abstract, delicate, messy and sensual sculptures of Karla Black that testify to the physical experience of the world beyond metaphorical and symbolic references, between fingerprints and dust; images and parts of the body launched and expanded in Lucy Kim's provocative paintings, which distort the deliberate veracity; immaculate surfaces and familiar forms, made through refined processes, are stripped of their supposed functionality, breaking human relationships with inanimate matter in the work of Magali Reus; Patrick Hill's abstract sculpture overlays hard and soft materials by putting into dialogue Minimalism and the human body; non-static images, filmed, combined, and readapted in Philipp Timischl's situationist sculptural installation, in the midst of the breakup of personal narrative and saturated information systems; the discarded but magnificently resurrected object with eccentric delicacy in the aesthetic research of Ry Rocklen; the poetry of Takahiro Iwasaki in reproducing architectural structures and urban landscapes using unusual materials, exploring the role of the concept of tradition in building cultural identity in Japanese architecture; for Yngve Holen, industrial objects, almost inhumane because of their futuristic splendor, are cut, opened, or presented in ways that raise questions about how human beings are reconfigured in a technological acceleration era.