Art & Alienation

What form might a work of art take that seeks to convey something of this sense of alienation in the present? Art & Alienation brings together more or less recent works by 8 artists, most of whom live in Europe. Each artist presents extracts from what is often experimental and in-flux practice. These singular universes mask a shared idea: artistic practice is also always a critique of production. Artistic creation always already comes into being alienated in capital’s abstraction. The irresolvable contradictions on the social, creative and economic horizon of art only reach resolution in negation.

In the exhibition, the abrasive dimension of existence is inscribed in forms of deskilling, economic insecurity and détournement. False equivalences and errors of the mind haunt this exploration of a subject as old as the idea of modernity itself.

“The more labor is de-personalised and abstracted, the more it appears as creative and personalized.”
Benjamin Noys, The Persistence of the Negative: A Critique of Contemporary Continental Theory, Edinburgh University Press, 2010, p.165