Artists: Kyosai Kawanabe, Hanna Hur, Andy Meerow, Alexandra Noel Exhibition title: Comforter Venue: Shanaynay, Paris, France Date: March 13 – April 26, 2015 Photography: Images courtesy of the artists and Shanaynay A balance overhead Turns into a “look at What could be an instead: Oblique;” maybe mislead By whatever gets at The balance overhead: The cousins of … Read more
Artist: G. Küng Exhibition title: Inexhaustible Gifts of Celebratory Fruits Venue: Antoine Levi, Paris, France Date: March 27 – May 16, 2015 Photography: Images courtesy of the artist and Antoine Levi, Paris Inexhaustible Gifts of Celebratory Fruits* “I can already tell you what I’ve seen around me, and that’s conspicuous signs of satisfaction! Fruits, fresh and simple, … Read more
Artist: Sophie Nys Exhibition title: Ein Tisch ohne Brot ist ein Brett Curated by: Elf Turpin Venue: CRAC Alsace, Altkirch, France Date: March 1 – May 17, 2015 Photography: Aurélien Mole. Images courtesy of the artist and CRAC Alsace Ein Tisch ohne Brot ist ein Brett, ein Tisch ohne Brot ist ein Brett, ein Tisch ohne Brot ist … Read more
Artists: Jean-Marie Appriou, Cory Arcangel, Bastien Aubry & Dimitri Broquard, Dewar & Gicquel, Piero Gilardi, Tilman Hornig, Renaud Jerez, Rachel de Joode, Bevis Martin & Charlie Youle, Marlie Mul, Owen Piper, Hayley Tompkins, Anne de Vries Exhibition title: Deep Screen Venue: Parc Saint Léger, Centre d’art contemporain, Pougues-les-Eaux, France Date: March 14 – May 24, 2015 … Read more
Artist: Jean-Baptiste Bernadet Exhibition title: Vetiver Venue: Galerie Valentin, Paris, France Date: January 17 – March 7, 2015 Photography: Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Valentin, Paris In his Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein describes the structure of our thoughts as they are prior to an illuminating discovery, when they remain on hold, with contradictions left to resolve. … Read more
The Registry of Promise is a series of exhibitions that reflect on our increasingly fraught relationship with what the future may or may not hold in store for us. These exhibitions engage with and play upon various readings of promise as simultaneously anticipating a future and its fulfillment or lack thereof, as well as a kind of inevitability, either positive or negative. Such polyvalence assumes a particular poignancy in the current historical moment. Given that the technological and scientific notions of progress inaugurated by the Enlightenment no longer have the same purchase they once did, we have long since abandoned the linear vision of the future the Enlightenment once betokened. Meanwhile, what is coming to substitute our former conception would hardly seem to be a substitute at all: the looming specter of global ecological catastrophe. From the anthropocentric promise of modernity, it would seem, we have turned to a negative faith in the post-human. And yet the future is not necessarily a closed book. Far from fatalistic, The Registry of Promise takes into consideration these varying modalities of the future while trying to conceive of possible others. In doing so, it seeks to valorize the potential polyvalence and mutability at the heart of the word promise.
Taking place over the course of approximately one year, The Registry of Promise consists of four autonomous, interrelated exhibitions, which can be read as individual chapters in a book. It was inaugurated by The Promise of Melancholy and Ecology at the Fondazione Giuliani, Rome, followed by The Promise of Multiple Temporalities at Parc Saint Léger, Centre d’art contemporain, Pougues-Les-Eaux and The Promise of Moving Things at Centre d’art contemporain d’Ivry – le Crédac, Ivry-sur-Seine, and will conclude with The Promise of Literature, Soothsaying and Speaking in Tongues at De Kabinetten van De Vleeshal, Middelburg.
