OUR EYES ADJUST TO THE DARK
SEBASTIÁN BELTRÁN, FEDERICO CARTAS, MARIANA CON, ROBERTO CORTÁZAR,
PEDRO MAGAÑA, FABIÁN UGALDE, AND ERNESTO WALKER.
Installation view, Sala Norte
CURATORIAL TEXT
Observing distant galaxies and splitting the most fundamental particles has opened an impenetrable distance between the universe as we know it and our subjective experience of it. Human life, fragile, short, saturated with feelings, is in conflict with the loud and infinite silence of the universe that the scientific method has unveiled to us. A categorical juxtaposition of the subjective experience and objective reality, it seems, has never been more accentuated. How do we integrate understanding of our finitude with the knowledge of the infinity of existence? In the universe, every point of which can be precisely measured, where do we place our ineffable experiences like love, fear, awe, and sublime? Where do we address our mystical experiences, hopes, and questions in the world that, in the words of Joseph Campbell, “simply is”, silent to our search for meaning?
Our Eyes Adjust to the Dark offers the audience an opportunity to confront the questions about our place in the ever-expanding world by fine-tuning our vision to new concepts made tangible through vastly different artistic practices and philosophies represented in the show. It is a look at our longing to be integrated into the world as a fundamental part of a human condition.
The exhibition takes its title from the line in the poem My God, It’s Full of Stars by an American poet laureate Tracy K. Smith. An elegy to her father, an engineer who worked on the Hubble telescope, the poem draws an image of humans striving to see through the darkness of the universe, augmenting their vision with science and their minds with awe at the scale of the cosmos. “We saw to the edge of all there is — / So brutal and alive it seemed to comprehend us back”. Speaking of science in poetry, just as operating with its concepts in the pictorial space has been so rare for Western art, it prompted C.P. Snow to coin the “two cultures” term in his seminal Cambridge lecture in 1956 that stressed polarization of art and science into two opposite fields. As the exhibition shows, this separation is slowly waning.
Illuminated by the art pieces glowing through the salas of the gallery, Our Eyes Adjust to the Dark exhibition offers a plethora of approaches, or rather bridges, to connect the vastness outside of us with the vastness within. Perhaps we are not a mere witness to the events unfolding around us but ¨the universe experiencing itself¨. In that case, no amount of steps towards its great mysteries will satisfy us, as, in the words of Annaka Harris ¨there’s no traveling forward when you are the river¨. But setting pessimism on the limits of human cognition aside, we must open our minds as our eyes adjust to the dark.
Anton Meshkov
Cabeza Masculina en 3/4
Roberto Cortázar
