Mark Wyse
Wednesday, 11 November 2009
Work from Disavowal.
“Disavowal is an engagement with our conflicted relationship to desire. If in a crude sense modernism is an embrace of desire and postmodernism is a critique of that desire, this show seeks to commingle the two. In doing so it explores key works by both contemporary and historical artists who restrain, displace, or distance desire with the intentional, or unintentional effect of accentuating desire. This show takes as its premise that desire intensifies in relation to restraint.
This show started as an act of curation. Wallspace asked me to curate a show of photographs. I quickly realized I was at the mercy of the artists I wanted to include and the availability of historical pieces.
This was unacceptable. It only made sense to not submit to the control and intentions of the artists I wished to show. The unintentional or disavowed aspect of their work was what I wanted to see. The solution dictated me cutting into my books, to show precisely the objects that had formed my thinking about the work. To show the reproductions themselves, by framing the reproductions. My desire was to shift the context to a context of individuals. In this sense I think of my show as a show of portraits, portraits of desire, as if each person’s psyche was in the room.” – Mark Wyse