Evan Nesbit
Roberts & Tilton is pleased to announce “And There Is an End” a group exhibition examining works iconoclastic to the present par of accustomed aesthetics. “And There Is an End” calls for a questioning of the contemporary turned conventional, instigating a search for a fiction in the idea.
In such a pursuit, one can only attempt to draw parallels to an inquiry that reflects life; to look into the mirror and see qualities of ourselves and our times. A search for poetic truths entails a search for art that not only has a dialogue with contemporary issues, but talks back to us. This exhibition brings together disparate voices to convene in a context spanning multiple generations and varied identities. With a range of works that acknowledges the individual via paintings and sculptural works with an unabashed display of the personal, the hand and the intuitive, implementing autonomous figuration and tactile expressions of materials that question the act of production and active image making.
Notions of the authentic are explored through imagistic work produced by divergent fissions and decay. Through an unencumbered idea-to-material action, a calculated “stream of consciousness” response is postured. Quoted quotidian relics find new regard, paintings appear breakable, color is consensual. Fiction and the absolute conflate in speculations of our own histories and immediacies.
In a scrimmage with trends that are over saturated with visual tricks, a shift in perception and anticipation of the unexpected and innate is constructed. The risks of visceral instincts and articulated vernaculars are at play to create images that are lively and impulsively archetypal. “And There Is an End” does not state or predict an ending, but boldly beckons for an end to provoke new beginnings.
…and the fault with most banalities is that they are not banal enough. Banality here is not infinite in its depth and consequence, but rests on a foundation of spirituality and aesthetics. - Asger Jorn
