Jason
Haam is pleased to announce a group exhibition 《Deaf Republic》, which will be open to public
from March 30th through May 4th, 2024. Moral and ethical dilemmas inherent in
times of crisis are visible through the works by Peter Buggenhout, Marie
Cloquet, Urs Fischer, Jihyoung Han, Mike Lee, Moka Lee, Max Hooper Schneider,
Emily Mae Smith, and Mircea Suciu.
The presentation combines relatively older
works created in the 2010s with new works made specifically for the show by the
artists of various ethnic, cultural, and generational backgrounds. The mixed
installation of found imageries, paintings, and sculptures provides rich visual
commentaries on the habitual ignorance of our contemporary society.
The
title of the show is an ode to Ilya Kaminsky’s critically acclaimed poetry
collection ‘Deaf Republic’. In the book, the townspeople feign deafness, which
works both as a shield and a weapon in the face of violence. The exhibition,
hence, sheds light on two important facts. On the one hand, it is an urgent
reminder that brutality is a constant threat that exists everywhere even at
this very moment.
On the other, our lives are heavy with irony — as if we do
not hear about these tragedies — building our very own ‘deaf republics’. The
exhibition invites viewers to confront their own perceptions of ignorance and
contemplate on the delicate balance between blissful unawareness and conscious
enlightenment. Through a thought-provoking array of artworks, the exhibition
challenges conventional notions of ignorance, inviting viewers to explore the
complexities of human consciousness and the pursuit of truth.
Peter
Buggenhout’s amorphous sculptures, Mont Ventoux #31 (2018)
and Mute Witness #6 (2018), reject all symbolism and
sculptural convention, and are “independent of aesthetic considerations“, as
the artist comments. Large panel works (2022) by Marie Cloquet presents new
hybrid landscapes that constitute a visual motif that reminds of the futility
of mankind’s desire to control in the face of Nature, while Urs Fischer’s Land
of Opportunists(2022) is drawn from his own urban inspirations, such
as the nature and complexities of evolving metropolitan paradigms.
