Current Exhibition: THE THIRD PERSPECTIVE

The Japanese novelist Jun'ichirō Tanizaki wrote his essay on aesthetics, In Praise of Shadows, in 1933 - thirty years before he was shortlisted for the Nobel Prize in Literature. The book is an ode to the mystery of atmosphere and the beauty of the subtle; a loose amalgam of thoughts on Japanese interiors and his reflections on darkness. For example, he compliments “cloudy translucence, like that of jade, the faint, dreamlike glow that suffuses it, as if it had drunk into its very depths the light of the sun; the complexity and profundity of colour.”

The artworks in this exhibition – brought together from Brussels, Paris, Vienna and Berlin – aim to embody his ideas of nuance. They explore subtlety, atmosphere, the ephemeral, the shadow, the misty, the clouded, and aim to examine our contemporary existence through shades of meaning. The featured contemporary artists ask us to rethink how we experience our realities in their most subtle and expansive ways.

The show takes its name from Afrika Brooke’s recent book, The Third Perspective, which asks us to take a look at self-censorship in the age of cancel culture and online intolerance. It’s a call for mindful expression in an era of binary reduction. Instead of black and white, this is an exhibition about shades, gradation, abstraction and reduction - Work that inspires questioning. As Tanizaki noted in his conclusion: “I would push back into the shadows the things that come forward too clearly.”

 

About the curator: Francesca Gavin

 

She is the editor-in-chief of EPOCH Review and the Artistic Director of viennacontemporary. Gavin has written ten books on art and visual culture and curated exhibitions such as Mushrooms at Somerset House and The Dark Cube at Palais de Tokyo. She co-curated Manifesta11 and was the founding curator of the Soho House group (2009-16), putting together a collection of over 3000 works internationally. Gavin is a contributing editor at Twin and Beauty Papers and regularly writes for publications including the Financial Times HTSI, Cura, Marie Claire and Frieze. She has a monthly radio show Rough Version on NTS Radio on art and music which has been running for over 8 years.