COMMON GROUND BARRIER

GALLERY:
Zn

OPENING:
Saturday, June 8, 2013, 2 pm

EXHIBITION DATA:
June 11 to August 31, 2013

The opening of countries' frontiers and markets comprised the promise of egalitarian wealth sharing. The public accessibility of the Internet promised, together with simplified and later on real time methods of communication, public domains of knowledge sharing and learning.
But - there are two sides of a coin.
Traditional social structures are forced to give way to careerism. Autonomy modifies to opportunity and common personality disorders reach total burn out. 
Hence, knowledge and truth is not necessarily the same thing.

In the past scientific phenomena were visually depicted, however, its progress overtook art which thereupon placed it in a self-reflexive isolation. Today artists are back in the game again by using research and technological methodology to express, translate or to provide access to complex contents. 

Common Ground Barrier is an exhibition that investigates issues through works that incorporate non-fictional and fictional methods to achieve a resonant representation of the contemporary.
The presented works exemplify the individual conceptual and visual approaches of the eight participating artists and represent different spectra of contexts and motivations.

How can collective memory be built if there is no such thing as historic truth? How is history created, archived and represented? What is the value of humanity in the globalized society? What does globalization mean at all? How and where can it be possible to present documents of multinational historic traumata? How to make the unseen visible? How can specific information be summarized and translated? Is information designed for peer groups? What are possible channels for the dissemination of information outside the mainstream?

Another aspect of the exhibition is the exploration of the impartial function of the gallery and therefore its imbedded dilemma of neutrality, critical dialog and commercialism. ForCommon Ground Barrier the gallery will be converted to an archive. The viewer is invited to engage not only with the works but also with the research material provided by the artists. Room for examinations and discussions will be provided and the visitor is encouraged to benefit to the documentation of the exhibition through written contributions or blog set entries.

A programmatic expansion of the exhibition is the screenings of documentary films in the gallery's common room in cooperation with institutions, artists and filmmakers.

During the opening of the exhibition on Saturday, June 8th, 2013 Carlos Celdran will do a performance Portrait of the Artist as Pilipino - The Artist is In followed by the screening of Jay Abello's documentary Pureza and a talk with Jay Abello, Carlos Celdran and Kiri Dalena.