Drawing on his interests in issues such as repetition, narrative and translation, Alejandro Cesarco realizes a curatorship of artworks from artists that share his conceptual and aesthetic concerns.

To our Parents is a dedication, an offering, a form of address, a definition of audience. It is an acknowledgment of the past, and the continuing presence of the past in the present. To dedicate the show to a primary relationship (biological or adopted, literal or metaphorical) is a way of constructing a genealogy and a way of trying to get close to the core source of our understandings, methods, inhibitions, possibilities, expectations, etc.

Some of the questions the show poses are how the past (our history) both enables and frustrates possibilities, how we rewrite the past with our work, and how difference is produced in repetition. More generally, the show calls attention to the structures that allow for certain narratives while silencing others.

The work of resignifying and repeating, through re‑presenting, reframing and restating is taken up in diverse ways by the cross‑generational artists included in the show. The impulse to displace or recontextualize suggests particular queries into cultural and aesthetic politics. A rose is a rose is a rose, until it is not. [AC]

   

Participating artists

* including work in collaboration with Richard Hoeck (AUT, 1965)