EXHIBITION

Nothing Is Impossible

The Mattress Factory, Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh, 03/20/2010 - 08/08/2010

500 Sampsonia Way

ABOUT

If we consider that nothing is impossible and that anything can happen, how would we live differently? What could we envision? Where could we be? What can we hope for? What are the implications if we banish contemporary constrictions and delimitations of thinking?

In his book The Ticklish Subject: The Absent Centre of Political Ontology Slovenian philosopher and critical theorist Slavoj Žižek critiques the notion that the only good ideas are those that work. He contends that this supposition automatically assumes a global capitalist ideology; for ideas to work they must make sense and be profitable. Žižek argues that contemporary thought is constricted to what is possible, obstructing what he defines as “genuine politics”; the art of what is impossible. It is the impossible which offers us a new landscape for this moment, altering the parameters of the present and the future. As he states, “it changes the very parameters of what is considered ‘possible’ in the existing constellation.”

Artistic practice is considered a method of re-thinking our relationship with the world, of posing other possibilities, other narratives. The working material of the artist becomes the hidden and mutable possibilities of the physical, the social, the scientific and the political. A relationship between thinking and form is developed. This extension of the imaginary and confrontation of reality asks us to consider what role we play in the way things are.

In 1999 curator Sheena Wagstaff applauded the affirmation by the Mattress Factory directors, Barbara Luderowski and Michael Olijnyk, that “nothing is impossible.” In the development of this project, five artists – Karl Burke, Rhona Byrne, Brian Griffiths, Bea McMahon and Dennis McNulty – were invited to spend a period of two months researching and developing work in Pittsburgh, and to consider the potential of this invitation and the impossible.

Mark Garry & Georgina Jackson
Curators-in-Residence

For More Information

APT ARTISTS ON VIEW

Brian Griffiths

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