Ahead of the 21st century : the Pisces Collection

— Éditeur(s) : Ostfildern, Hatje Cantz Verlag
— Année : 2002
— Format : 29,50 x 29,50 cm
— Illustrations : 180 en couleurs
— Page(s) : 216
— Langue(s) : anglais, allemand
— ISBN : 3-7757-1251-8
— Prix : 49,80 €

Don’t trust me — Trust me
par Margit Brehm

Ahead of the 21st century, both as title and as the exhibition of works from the Pisces Collection makes an assertion. The presentation of works from the ’80s and ’90s, the last decades of the 20th century, is an independent cross-section of things in the last 20 years that the international art community has recognised and defined as worthy of discussion. They are artworks which enunciate the radical relativism of the idea that truth is only one possible interpretation of an interpretation.
The quest for truth, characteristic of a view of art, which uses the picture as the experiental space of the individual, is here replaced by the cool gesture of sampling. It is a strategy that draws a possible conclusion from the loss of innocence. Because of this, every gesture must be questioned, and in itself broken down, and every assertion must already contain its own negation.
The fascinating paradox lies in the construction, which gives expression to this posture : an artistic strategy which, conscious of deceiving, uses pictorial means in such a way that the apparent picture could be experienced as a deception, but fails entirely to deceive. The question of the possibility of truth in pictures remains open, however. They do not try to give answers, but formulate new questions.