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Trembling Thought

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Katharien De Villiers

2 July – 13 July 2018

 

Artist Statement: My practice is not an imitation of speech and its meaning - it is a system of communication that is not derived from, but that interfaces with, multiple forms of meaning notation. The show is another attempt at the materialization of desire, power and subjectivity to form a recorded library of warped memory. Memory in my experience is unstable- emotional actually, and thus potentially irresponsible, even dangerous. It can be warped, bent and broken, turning memory into a strange collection of collectively independent, irresponsible, unaccountable thoughts and conclusions. Walking through and witnessing numerous breaks, collisions and themes - experiencing the innovation and improvisation of each successive work the viewer gains access to an ongoing promise, a 'not yet', a 'what is coming' if the artists 'new' consciousness that is always emergent. The viewer need only ask him/ herself two questions when confronted with the work: What do you see? and How was it made?

Levi-Strauss wrote about the idea of considering the exhibition as a laboratory, with the laboratory existing as a community of solitary souls in as much as solitary souls are capable of thinking for themselves (be that viewers OR work). This is a thought I've carried close throughout the building of this show, although this specific laboratory acts more like a power station; a producer of new ideas that becomes a collective artwork in itself.
The emotional sublimity of the imagination taught me how indispensable it is to think with all bodily senses. To create with the truth of one's own flesh. The product is a woven dreamscape of photographs, colour and texture, creating arrangements of understanding and reality that can only be my own.

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