EXERCISES IN SEEING

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE



Post Brothers Present

EXERCISES IN SEEING

a one night only exhibition held entirely in the dark



Saturday, December 5 th , 2009. 9 PM – 6 AM

Free and open to the public



Queen’s Nails Projects

3191 Mission St, San Francisco, California.



a free audio guide by David Buuck will be available as a limited edition CD and will be downloadable at queensnailsprojects.com



Featuring projects by:

Jesse Ash (UK), Olivier Babin (FR), Nina Beier (DK), Francesca Bennett & Nicolas Matranga (CA/NL), Raymond Boisjoly & Ryan Peter (CA), Liudvikas Buklys (LT), Deric Carner (US), Etienne Chambaud (FR), Brian Clifton (US), Torreya Cummings (US), Dina Danish (EG/NL), Gintaras Didžiapetris (LT), Rosie Farell (UK ), Isola & Norzi (IT), Seth Lower (US), Benoit Maire (FR), Darius Mikšys (LT), Tegan Moore (CA), Elena NarbutaitÄ— (LT), Daniel Oates Kuhn (US/CA), Kamau Amu Patton (US), Mandla Reuter (DE), Snowden Snowden (US), Gareth Spor (US), David Stein (US), Daniel Turner (US ), Freek Wambacq (BE), Jen Weih (CA), and Christine Wong Yap (US)



“Is not vision itself—seeing abysses?” - Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra



One cannot be certain that they have seen the Exercises In Seeing exhibition, but they may have heard about it from its numerous audio guides, whose authors did not see it either. Apparently, the exhibition escaped visual perception completely. Originally curated by Valentinas Klimašauskas and Jonas Žakaitis, a series of artworks first disappeared at Tulips & Roses in Vinius, Lithuania, and then subsequently vanished at The Royal Standard in Liverpool, UK. Now at San Francisco’s Queens Nails Projects, the critical enterprise Post Brothers has turned the lights off, inviting over 30 local and international artists to test the aesthetic and conceptual potentials of the dark. An “inhibition” rather than an “exhibition,” all of the works in this paradoxical exhibition are “shown” without the aid of gallery lighting. Despite this predicament, the multidisciplinary projects presented use this visual lack to elicit alternative means of understanding, charting absence as much as presence, lingering in the gaps of perception.



Some of the artists have chosen to place an already existing work in this cave, extending and compromising their artwork’s critical capacity by purging its perceptual palette. Others have contributed new projects that will disappear for their first appearance; their very existence dependent on blind encounter within this treacherous void. Headless sculptures, encrypted transmissions and familiar objects will vocalize missing truths, creating a correspondence between the shadow and the real, stretching the encounter of form to its lineaments. While some artists nefariously throw caution in the wind, others stretch the limits of caution itself, teasing our anxieties and trust. Forebearers range from surrealist and conceptual propositions on the nature of art and perception, to the use of negation in philosophy and science, to many of the works of James Joyce, where lights going out allows characters to see clearly for the first time, to the movie ‘Les Amants Du Pont-Neuf’ where a blind woman sneaks into the Louvre at night to experience the works firsthand. In lieu of standard and instructive documentation, writer David Buuck has provided an audio guide to orient the viewer. However, as he has not seen any of the works, his directions through this nocturnal vacuum may mislead the audience into dimensions unknown.



For one night only, Queens Nails Projects will become "terra incognita,'' a dark space on the map, a blind spot in our vision for impossible projections and amplified sensations. Here, rules are nullified, orders undermined, negation celebrated. This will be an examination of darkness, a probing of immateriality, a venture in non-knowledge, a scrutiny of sensitivity, an undertaking in underexposure, a demonstration of disappearence, a movement into the unknown, a series of Exercises In Seeing. Will even the attendee's see the show?