A group exhibition with Lara Almarcegui, Mercedes Azpilicueta, Daniel Jacoby, David Maroto, Falke Pisano, and Victor Santamarina. Curated by Tiago de Abreu Pinto.

The exhibition The total scab-free solidarity and performative silence that struck floor-shows and soundstages from Desert to NJ coast for over half a year takes its title from and refers to a particular extract from Infinite Jest (a novel by David Foster Wallace) that focuses on president Johnny Gentle, a jester-like character who embodies a lack of compromise, responsibility and empathy towards others. He epitomises somebody who does not involve the community in his decisions, nor fosters a sentiment of unity among them. The works in this exhibition engage orally and somatically with the visitor by showing how the environment affects, protects, or alters the body in processes of exchange, to essentially reconfirm the importance of interrelationality and intersubjectivity between ourselves and others. Johnny Gentle stands as a neuralgic element to raise socio-political questions addressing the dichotomy of the private and the public—understanding the body from within, and its relation to the surrounding environment that potentially affects us and is affected by us. The exhibition ultimately unfolds a psycho-topological conundrum involving the visitor in a “catalogue-novel,” in which a set of characters open a dialogue around solidarity, collectivity, interdependence, and the process of becoming empathetic subjects.

Tale of a Tub. Justus van Effenstraat 44. 3027 TK Rotterdam,the Netherlands.

http://a-tub.org/onsite

https://davidmaroto.info

Image: David Maroto