［Press Release]
Intelligentsia Gallery is delighted to present the group exhibition Hermeneutics of a Room including works by Meng Zhigang (Guilin, 1975), Simona Rota (Mäcin, 1979), Matjaz Tancic (Ljubljana, 1982), James Ronner (New York, 1979), and Camille Ayme (St Etienne, 1983).
Curated by Garcia Frankowski, the exhibition explores possible interpretations of the room as container of space, experiences, relationships, feelings, and identity. The room is understood as a vehicle to decipher the dialectical relationship with its occupants and observers. Through different mediums of action, each of the artists unveils hermeneutical tools. Intelligentsia Gallery, a room of sorts, gathers together a series of sculptures, paintings and photographs that inform our subjective awareness of the room as a container for the display and interaction of the works of art, while simultaneously revealing their role as containers of rooms.
The works displayed in ‘Hermeneutics of a Room’ develop perfunctory narratives that unfold by means of an interaction between the artist and the art work, between the observer and the subject of study. The room provides space for philosophical interrogation, as Meng Zhigang’s series Blank which paints spaces purged of furniture to leave room for self-reflection and introspective analysis. James Ronner questions the role of generic matter of post-industrial manufacture and art creation, by transforming objects of mass production into unique hand-crafted glass works usually associated with the domestication of space.
In Simona Rota’s photographic series Big Exit the dualistic relationship between domestic space and the corporeal sheds light on hermeneutical readings of containment and inhabitation. Performative self-portraits in an apartment, her photographs capture instants of dynamic tension between the body and the space that contains it, providing reciprocal protagonism in a visual struggle for dominance and capitalization.
The exhibition researches and scrutinizes the room in both its spatial and psychological domains. Matjaz Tancic tridimensional reconstructions of space in his series Timekeepers recreate the multiplicity of semiotic layers usually absent in conventional photography. The resulting work challenges passive contemplation by altering our understanding of the picture and everything it contains, taking us from silent concentration to a state of permanent distraction. Everything comes to our notice in renewed form, from the textures of the walls in the room, to the gestures of the people that inhabit it.
Exploring the relationship between semiotic interpretation and the psychology of the space, Camile Ayme’s Chambre avec vue presents a series of spaces that evidence the interaction between subject and object while forging a portrait of the understanding of a space as a means to construct dreams and battle nightmares.
Subject to multiple readings, the artworks showcased in the exhibition posses a twofold character, to interpret and to be interpreted in that, as the reconstruction of space and the concept of room through every particular work offers plausible readings of being-in-the-world (Dasein) through the ‘Hermeneutics of a Room’.
The Exhibition is open Saturdays and Sundays by appointment from 3:00pm to 4:00pm.
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