Artists: Ethan Assouline, Jan Domicz, Gina Folly
Exhibition title: Whimsies
Curated by: Moritz Scheper
Venue: Neuer Essener Kunstverein, Essen, Germany
Date: June 3 – August 22, 2022
Photography: All images copyright the artists and Philipp Kurzhals/Neuer Essener Kunstverein
One of the general challenges of group exhibitions is setting a substantial and/or formal bracket in which the positions shown can take place without losing their integrity. Commonly, works are used in an illustrative manner or reduced to partial aspects, which has once again increased in the last fifteen years due to the rise of the supra-instance ‘curator’. WHIMSIES understands itself as a question of how, in the context of a group exhibition, a scenario can be designed that respects the multidimensionality and complexity of the works presented without slipping entirely into arbitrariness. Or, in other words, how can the production and maintenance of hermeticism be organized in an environment that constantly demands explanations and discursive resolution? From our perspective, the lever for such an exhibition project can actually only be to exhibit reservedness, incidentally in full awareness of the contradictoriness of wanting to present on the one hand, but organizing and perpetuating hermeticism on the other.
Despite significant differences, the works by Gina Folly, Ethan Assouline, and Jan Domicz are united by a certain whimsicality towards the viewer. Whimsical in that they do not reveal everything, but flirt with withdrawal and enigma. Which, however, should not be misunderstood as a pose, but rather as a serious possibility of a different approach to the works that is not already laid out and spelled out.
Ethan Assouline (*1994, FR) lives in Paris, where he co-runs the art space Treize. Assouline has had solo exhibitions at Macao, Milan and Le Credac, Ivry-sur-Seine, among others.
Jan Domicz (*1990, POL) has exhibited in diverse contexts, including the Venice Architecture Biennale and Frankfurt’s MMK. Domicz lives and works in Warsaw.
Gina Folly (*1983 SUI) has had solo exhibitions at Studiolo, Rome; Kunsthaus Baselland, Basel; and Almanac, London, among others. She lives in Basel.
