Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft

Exhibition opening: 2 March 2007, 18.00 to 21.00
at nüans, Ellerstrasse 187, 40227 Düsseldorf

All that art tries to make invisible we transform into art. With this premise, this new exhibition from the Centre of Attention foregrounds aspects of our practice little commented on and brings together a number of wabi-sabi strands of our work to create an original piece for NÜANS, Düsseldorf.

The initial installation opens to the public and allows visitors to make changes to the work, (first at the private view, and for the duration of the show) by adding, moving and recombining elements, etc. The space and the changes will be documented daily, then monthly (with the help of Düsseldorf's community of artists).

Gemeinschaft: family (kinship group) tribe - unity of will
Gesellschaft: self interest, civil society, contract - sacrifice of will

This open source work allows visitors to make artistic judgements and statements and suggest challenges to our curatorial and artistic tropes. Further it allows us to attempt a dematerialisation of the audience and an ever evolving exhibition.

One of the questions raised by this piece is, does the group thwart the intention of the artist? Or does a collective response add to the artist's intention?

Nothing lasts, nothing is finished and nothing is perfect. The unstableness of the piece underpins the instability of definitions, of human interaction, of the work's existence and meaning.

The individual is an unstable subject but the subject as object can not avoid an increased entropic fate.

the Centre of Attention, February 2007

With thanks to Elmar Hermann, Maki Umehara, Anna Heidenhain at nuans