Poi piovve dentro a l’alta fantasia*
– Dante Alighieri
Reality is a construct, it is contingent on our capabilities as humans, our senses, which gather information, our genetic make-up as a result of the genes passed down from past generations, and the impact of the environment on these genes and our body in general. Our environment goes from the weather, to nourishment, to interactions with nature and most importantly the interaction with other humans. We are after all a social animal we live in an ant farm. All these interactions and probably many others which I am not mentioning due to my reality being limited by myself, are our make-up and the constituent blocks of our reality. Nonetheless, these factors shift, weather changes, food changes, genes are less useful or more useful for the current period, people interact differently, all changes. That change is the constant, it is understood, however we are focused most of the time, when do these changes take place or will. And this is where it gets tricky, because it is almost impossible to see until the change has taken place and is now a constant. What we can see is the beginning of change but not the change before it happens. Futurology is a tricky business.
Reality is thus a fraught definition, and something that is easily changed and shaped into something else, even within its current assumptions. We all live within a current set of assumptions which we mostly take for granted, and assume it was always so and always will be so, which is not true, but makes for peace of mind and makes it also easier to carry on living and worrying about taking the dog for a walk and buying aspirin in the pharmacy instead of if what one thinks has any validity or will it have some in a couple of years. Art is an expression of this reality by various means, in this case visual means. Through the construction and presentation of objects that ascertain a certain penchant for a reality. There are layers of reality in this, the current accepted reality, the personal reality of each participating artist and the reality of each viewer.
Much of philosophy and literature devotes itself to this topic, what is our constituent reality and does it have any importance, and can we perceive it, from Plato to Hobbes or Proust to Borges to name just a few. In all fields this is of interest, as the never-ending search continues for understanding ourselves.
This exhibition is a thought in this direction, how do we view a single continuous line throughout the exhibition space, which is composed of wall works of 30 by 40 centimeters (approx.) made by various artists, their works mixed together. It is this meshing, twisting and extending that this line vies to create, symbolizing or more than that, exemplifying in visual terms our ever evolving, ever twisting reality. How we are something less important than we think as individuals, our capacity reduced to but one body, and how we perceive more as a collective, our many bodies brought together towards something greater than ourselves. How this collective can also at the same time be or become stifling and oppressing to the individual and how the individual at times stands out and moves the whole collective. The general and the particular at play. A visual cycling through various realities meshed into one or maybe not. The debate is ongoing.
Martim Brion, Munich, 2025
*as it rains in fertile imagination
Martim Brion 