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the Avantgarde:
The Cell That Doesn't Believe In The Mind That It's Part Of
27 june – 12 september 2010
Curator: Lisette Smits
Artist: Chris Evans
Within Marres’ long-term research program into the 20th century and the idea of avantgarde, this exhibition presents the work of Chris Evans (Eastrington, UK, 1967).
A solo exhibition of an artist’s work is a unique occurrence in the program of Marres. Previous exhibitions rather focused on a specific period, such as the late 1960s in We Were Exuberant and Still Had Hope: Ettore Sottsass, works from Stockholm, 1969 or provided a reflection on a 20th century development, such as the group exhibition Depression. However, within the investigation into the avantgarde of the 20th century the individual position of the artist is essential, since it is precisely this position that time and again leads to a radical breach with existing artistic conventions and, whether individually or as a group, addresses new questions for art in a fundamental way.
The solo exhibition pre-eminently gives expression to the individual position of the modern artist, freed from a commission and operating from a relative autonomy with respect to prevailing value systems. The modern and in extent contemporary artist is his own commissioner, and the exhibition offers the social platform for his work. In an era in which the artist and his signature have been fully assimilated into the economy of the art market, it seems hardly possible for the individual artist to represent a meaningful position as such.
The Cell That Doesn’t Believe In The Mind That It’s Part Of presents an oeuvre of an artist who questions both the alleged autonomy of the artist and of his work. The existing and newly produced works in this exhibition reflect the outcome of Evans’ research into the space where several forms of patronage – with a private, corporate or social character – meet with art. The relationship between patronage and art has been subject to radical changes over the course of the last century. Patronage has been understood primarily as a relation between separate positions, such as the artist, the collector, the philanthropist, the commissioner, the public funding body and the art dealer. Although they never have been clearly defined in the past, these positions are increasingly intertwined nowadays. The individual works in this exhibition appear as silent witnesses of this investigation.
Despite the autonomy of art and the absence of a commissioner, Chris Evans’ practice still argues for the contemporary artwork as the unabated result of complex social power relations. The only position that seems to be left for the artist within the current play of power is inherently contradictory. It is a position that moves between artistic freedom and social responsibility, between individuality and collectivity, sovereignty and involvement. The exhibited works mirror this paradox by voice of opposite positions such as the nihilist vis-à-vis the constructivist and the libertine vis-à-vis the enlightened revolutionary.
Chris Evans employs classic genres (sculpture, portraiture, landscape) and materials (plaster, bronze), as well as popular techniques, of which airbrush is the most striking. The contemporary artist is proposed at once as professional and amateur and as specialist and generalist. The myth of the artist as genius and the artwork as the sovereign expression of his individuality is both negated and confirmed in an exhibition that knows no narrative, but rather should be understood as an open configuration of objects in which each part is the outcome of a web of negotiations.
New essays by Tirdad Zolghadr and Marina Vishmidt are published in conjunction with the exhibition.
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