WELTGEIST

curated by Bjorn Stern

JANUARY 18TH – FEBRUARY 18TH

This exhibition at the Kandlhofer gallery titled “Weltgeist” (eng. World Spirit) aims to explore the question of humanism and its perseverance in a time of self absorption. At the core of my curatorial proposal, with the contributions of seven contemporary international artists, rest the Sisyphean problem with the enormity of us not knowing the fundamentals of our own existence. It is at times a mundane question and sometimes a stupid question and at times a dramatic question. But it is a question since the beginning of consciousness, helped by the advent of language, which has caused ideologies, systems of governance, religiosity and other belief systems to flourish in its ersatz. Humanity can ascertain its biological existence through the clarity offered by science and it can explain its utility through empirical means, such as the evolution of our species, our urge to reproduce and to the need for self preservation. But it cannot explain its purpose. For that question to become meaningful, one can be helped by the many means of speculation that we have invented or discovered for ourselves. Philosophy, at times, can help and in this particular exhibition - a view through the eyes of artists, grappling with the same question.

The spirit of the world Weltgeist as supposed to the spirit of the time Zeitgeist, speak of a connected humanity. The Zeitgeist speak only of the results of such connectedness. The Hegelian view, for those who have yet to explore his philosophies, speak of the Weltgeist not as an actual object or an all-encompassing, all-present God figure, but as a means to better understand and to philosophise about history. Hegel proposed that the Weltgeist always had representatives in the shape of Volksgeister, the great people of history, who could be relied upon to determine the future and thus circumnavigate the more speculative and in the age of reason and empiricism of the nineteenth century, less appealing application of superstition and religiosity to his famous thesis that “what is real is reasonable”. The future as revealed by the Volksgeister would simply be inevitable.

And what futures do artists imagine? In my view, they may represent the Volksgeister of our time. Artists operate with the self and the mediation of self examination much in the same way as many of the great people of history, the Volksgeister, did, who honed carefully crafted legacies and mythologies on a world scale, whereas artists create such worlds for themselves.