The Desert of the Real Itself

The Desert of the Real Itself
Curated by Amanda Roscoe Mayo
October 5 – 28, 2012
Reception Friday, October 5th, 7-10 pm

MacArthur B Arthur is pleased to present The Desert of the Real Itself, featuring work by Christine M. Peterson, Paolo Salvagione, Adam Thorman, and Adam Waldran-Blain. Curated by Amanda Roscoe Mayo.

The Desert of the Real Itself is an exhibition of artworks that teeter between the act of feigning and the simulacrum. Jean Baudrillard’s questions of territory are explored throughout the exhibition. In his essay “Precession of Simulacrum,” Baudrillard discusses the entropy of space in relation to Cartesian theory, “Abstraction today is no longer that of the map, the double, the mirror, or the concept. Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being or a substance. It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal. The territory no longer precedes the map, nor survives it.” The works in the exhibition present systems, highlight boundaries, and arrive at humorous conclusions of where the edge is met.

The border occupies and is occupied by something other than the organizational structure it is exists to serve. It is occupied by, “the magic of the concept and the charm of the real.”