In Medias Res
2. Februar – 14. April 2019

Morehshin Allahyari & Daniel Rourke, Banz & Bowinkel, Malte Bartsch, Mariechen Danz, Angela Fette, Hans Haacke, Konsortium (Lars Breuer, Sebastian Freytag, Guido Münch), Reiner Maria Matysik, Theresa Schubert, Anja Schwörer

Let's get straight to the point and get ‘into the thick of things’ without further ado. The Latin phrase IN MEDIAS RES comes from the Roman poet Horace's Ars Poetica and is intended as a complimentary remark towards his Greek colleague Homer. In his epochal Illiad, Homer introduces listeners and readers to the plot from the very beginning without getting lost in long introductory and atmospheric descriptions (ab ovo = from the egg). Following on from this lyrical ideal, the group exhibition IN MEDIAS RES at Kunstverein Arnsberg focusses on the works themselves and their different contexts.

‘Art is the way we look at reality at a particular time.’ 

In an interview (1969), Hans Haacke explains this quote by the writer Oscar Wilde using the example of the Impressionists, who in the 19th century contributed to the emergence of a new sensitivity for the perception of light and colour values.

But how has our view of reality changed today in the age of digitalisation and how are the arts responding to this? Hybrid, interacting forms of reality determine our everyday lives, from physical space, natural or urban environments to virtual worlds, network connections, synapse and molecular structures of unimagined complexity that spread out in systemic associations.

Today, even the image we have of nature is created in the computer. How can we describe the reciprocal conditionality of parallel realities of so-called first, second and third nature, or what ways out into parallel universes do we imagine? Not only has the perception of nature today shifted from ‘direct’ perception through our sensory organs to perception by means of upstream visual devices such as telescopes, microscopes, smartphone and drone cameras or head-mounted displays, but it is also increasingly characterised by computer calculations.

Does art therefore have the potential to act as an orientation aid or commentary function by making multiple, co-existing, partly overlapping forms and developments of reality evident, thereby problematising any loss of reality and creating an awareness of temporal structures?

IN MEDIAS RES - questions can be formulated and answers about one's own position can be found from the objects or works in the individual reception.

Curated by Ursula Ströbele