SHUT UP AND PAINT, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 17 September 2016 - 16 Feburary 2017

Wasser, Wolken, Wind, Kunsthalle Würth, Schwäbisch-Hall, 30 September 2016 – 18 June 2017

Ressentiment – Kulturen des Dissens, IKOB, Eupen, Belgium, 25. January 2017 - 23. April 2017

 

Benefit maximization, goal orientation, efficiency improvement and attention economy … assuming a state of permanent hyper-activity, the above will lead to success, profit, growth, recognition … says and believes homo oeconomicus – who is in the process of assuming control of practically our entire global civilization and who never for a second doubts the point of his mission. Skepticism, criticism and resistance have not resulted in any common overwhelmingly convincing alternative concepts. Consequently, a team of artists, Elisabeth Gabriel & Daryoush Asgar, have designed places of retreat from this incessant productivity, spaces that reject its challenges and temptations – waiting rooms, in fact, in which people can survive independently and engage in any amount of reflection. Revolutionary ideas can take shape here, as can deliberations about the end of painting, a new departure in culture on the basis of prehistoric technology… or even let their minds go blank. Whatever the case, in terms of design and furnishing, Gabriel & Asgar's rooms for thinking and waiting in offer things stimulating, practical, useless and timeless … along with the necessary measure of absurdity and ironic distance. Lucas Gehrmann, curator, Kunsthalle Wien