Announcing: Without Fear or Reproach

For Immediate Release

WITHOUT FEAR OR REPROACH
18 november - 13 december 2003
http://www.aeroplastics.net/WFOR/WFOR_00.html

@
Witte Zaal (Sint-Lucas)
Posteernestraat, 9000 Gent BELGIUM
http://www.kunst.sintlucas.wenk.be/wittezaal/index.html


Colin COOK (USA)
Jiri DAVID (CZ)
Christoph DRAEGER (CH)
Matt DUCKLO (USA)
Maria FRIBERG (Sweden)
Rainer GANAHL (Austria)
Joy GARNETT (USA)
Leon GRODSKI (USA)
Jon HADDOCK (USA)
John ISAACS (UK)
Euan MacDONALD (UK)
Philippe MESTE (F)
Ryan McNAMARA (USA)
Alex McQUILKIN (USA)
David NICHOLSON (CAN)
Guy RICHARDS SMIT (USA)
Alastair THAIN (UK)
Dana WYSE (CAN)
Carrie YAMAOKA (USA)

Curated by Jerome Jacobs

>From 18th November to 13th December the exhibition
'Without fear or reproach' will be held at the
WITTE ZAAL art center in Ghent. This exhibition is
intended (at last ) to offer a few visual comments
on the aftermath of the world-shattering events of
11th September 2001.

The starting point is Joseph Beuys' artistic/humanist
metaphor of the Twin Towers of the seventies and
eighties, when the Soho district in New York was
enjoying a boom as the mecca of the international
contemporary art scene. In his collage postcard,
Beuys compared the Twin Towers with the Arabian twin
brothers and patron saints Cosmos and Damian,
religious figures who in Arabic culture symbolized
full racial harmony. This is a metaphor entirely at
odds with the present highly charged symbolism of the
towers the stark contrast between the Christian-
Judaic and Islamic worlds.

Since 11th September, thousands of pages have been
written, packed full with the opinions of every type
of critic, politician, sociologist and intellectual
on the event and the way it ultimately led to the
American 'a crusade against evil

Oddly enough, hardly anything was heard from the
contemporary art camp. There were certainly artists'
visual reactions to fetishistic American imperialism,
but only on rare occasions have works of artists
(mainly American or living in the US) been gathered/
put in context under the flag of a single exhibition
on this much-debated subject. Some of the works have
not been created for this particular exhibition but
participate strongly in expressing it's concept.

'Without Fear or Reproach' is intended to be both
straightforward and meaningful: by leaving the masses
of opinions aside for a while and letting artists
react to the present 'American feeling', using
nothing more than the interpretative power of an
image or a text.

To this end, the Witte Zaal has invited Brussels art
dealer Jerome JACOBS (http://www.aeroplastics.net) to
curate an exhibition of twenty artists, most from
North America or the UK, in whose work this topic
forms a common theme or allusion.

However, this exhibition is not 'a deliberate critic'
of America. It will not focus essentially on pictures
of plain violence, but also on ironic reflections on
present-day American society, it's obsessions and
fears as well as its often violent and aggressive
attitude towards itself and the rest of the world.

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WITHOUT FEAR OR REPROACH
18 november - 13 december 2003
http://www.aeroplastics.net/WFOR/WFOR_00.html

@
Witte Zaal (Sint-Lucas)
Posteernestraat, 9000 Gent BELGIUM
http://www.kunst.sintlucas.wenk.be/wittezaal/index.html

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