THE SALAMANDER DEVOURS ITS TAIL TWICE
The Salamander Devours its Tail Twice, a title inspired by a passage in Fahrenheit 451, expands on the following text:
“The comfortable people want only wax moon faces, poreless, hairless, expressionless. We are living in a time when flowers are trying to live on flowers, instead of growing on good rain and black loam. Even fireworks, for all their prettiness, come from the chemistry of the earth. Yet somehow we think we can grow, feeding on flowers and fireworks, without completing the cycle back to reality.”
The chapter, regarding the conceived annihilation of a cultural system, was a curatorial guide to selecting artists whose work referenced individual sensed experience in today's political climate, expansion of digital technologies, and sociocultural influences on the self.
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Fast-moving forward in the fantasy of the past. We have lost our sense of place. Confronted with the illusion of time, deep inside the sensation of always wanting more.
More time, more products, more illusions.
In a system of cycles, we try to find a sense of real in our present. But there is no real, reality is just a space of illusions that people can agree on, until the next cycle begins.
In this space, we produce. We produce this space.
In a cycle, where presenting cultural expectation rootlessly attaches us to ourselves, we find ourselves understanding a logic we cannot feel. We are grounded in a wealth of unknowns - economized - made known.
The Salamander Devours its Tail Twice brings together twenty-seven artists figuring out what it means to be human.
Each artist oscillates between self-understanding and cultural expectation. Located somewhere in the middle, they create an extension of themselves, a mirror from which they may better understand their position in the present, relation to the past, and anxieties around the future.
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Artists Included: Yambe Tam, Adeline de Monseignat, Chantal Powell, Thomas Kuijpers, Katie Ellen Fields, Alice Irwin, Kawita Vatanajyankur, Thomas Adam, Saskia Fischer, Michelle Gevint, Sarah Howe, Jan Dams, Alexander Glass, Stewart Hardie, Andrew Hart, Aaron Hegert, Stuart Jones, Dominic Till, Victor Seaward, Ashley Middleton, Brett Wallace, Luca Bosani, Patrick Gallagher, Ella Belenky, Seungwon Jung, Chris Klapper
Curated by // ashley middleton
Gallery 46 // 46 Ashfield St, London, E1 2AJ
Private View // 17 November 2018, 5 - 9pm
Exhibition Dates // 18 November - 5 December, 12 - 6pm