Artists: Leda Bourgogne, Henrik Olai Kaarstein, Tobias Spichtig, Alex Turgeon, Raphaela Vogel
Exhibition title: Hopeless Romantics
Curated by: Kristian Vistrup Madsen
Venue: Futura, Prague, The Czech Republic
Date: July 13 – August 22, 2021
Photography: Tomas Souček / all images copyright and courtesy of the artists and Futura, Prague
Note: Full text is available here. Exhibition booklet is available here
Here, romanticism names a riposte to science, enlightenment and rationality; a privileging of depth and complexity over clarity and progress. This comes out of a frustration with the triumph of literalness in art; the demand that it should signify, like language, be useful, or moral. Against this literalness, I posit allegory: against identity, existentialism. In these artists’ work we find thrownness – a battle with existence as a position of being outside, unsheltered – indulgence, longing, melancholy and power.
