The Object is the Mirror

The Object is the Mirror

The Object is the Mirror
Curator: Max Henry



All fiction is propaganda.
(Jacques Ellul)

A bad poet imitates, a good poet steals
(T.S. Eliot)

The social conditions of the present day is one of a mistrust of familiar icons (circa 2007) as we transition between two ages; the analog past and the virtual, digitized now. In contemporary art, artists are the new high priests teaching the blind (mainstream) to see that cultural memory is overloaded with doses of trivia and superfluous data.

Sifting through the rubbish, the artistic positions of the present day often contaminate and usurp the given authenticity of various categories of art historical works. The recent strategies for reinterpretations are doubling up the notion of provenance in the visual field. Original meaning (the creation myth) gets shaken and stirred into ambiguous zones of contextual mirrors. Through networks of digital media (the jpeg) and disseminated printed sources (art magazines) a Chinese box effect has led to information doppelgangers.

A new iconography clones the old ones, remixing the signposts of yesterday. Such visual mash-ups run roughshod over the discourse, even while owing to its semantics. (Re)-appropriation recombines the innovative gestures of important art iconography while sending out a reflection of them.

The Object is the Mirror embraces a broad range of conceptual approaches and methodologies, including painting, sculpture, drawing, text, photography, and video.


-Max Henry Vienna, 2007