EVERYTHING WAS MICHAEL BOLTON AND NOTHING HURT An exhibition curated by Gerardo Contreras PRETEEN GALLERY Andreas Angelidakis

Angelo Plessas Travess Smalley Elliott Wright An idea of a non-existence is broadly acknowledged when it comes to think of objects of which manifestation is purely digital. Deceptively, the perception of digital entities non-existence in the physical world appears to be univocal. In Everything Was Michael Bolton and Nothing Hurt, taking as basis a series of observations on the measurement problem in quantum theory, notions of the art object as particle and the art exhibition as system are investigated. In quantum reality, a system remains unaffected until consciousness participatory act alters it. In this sense, a system or configuration of art objects and the consequent interpretatory act of the observer may imply a perpetual collapse of meaning and reveal consciousness as a disruptive agent. The physicality of the digital (the discontinuous) becomes undeniable. Objects embodied in matter unfolding in four-dimensional space, move towards their annihilation through becoming-in-time and quantum entanglement transmaterialization. The perception of absolute actuality is challenged, bringing digitally rendered objects into existence in a staged Euclidian space. If uncertainty and absurdity lie at the core of what we call physical reality, should meaning be considered an end or a means? Should ending be considered a means or the end-? Is there anything such as a fact and a certainty in historical cosmologies? Is art necessarily a consequence of communication or the result of a total failure of such? Considering Freuds observations on the nature of matter and life in Beyond the Pleasure Principle, echoed later in Dawkins The Selfish Gene, art, -a phenomenon belonging to the realm of biology- has a tendency to self-invalidation, a drive for selfobliteration. Once the art object is created it is inevitably set in motion. A movement to insignificance, a transposition to meaninglessness. Could the velocity and the acceleration of this displacement be calculated? In Everything Was Michael Bolton and nothing Hurt digital geometries, architectures and mappings emerge to further distort spatial perception; the presence of liquified light in constant turmoil distracts the mind from an illusionary stillness. A solid object in which the multiple layers of matter-in-becoming are exposed as residual inconstancies due to simultaneous processes of multiplication and loss of information, suggests that form is pocketed with voids. Matter is in all phases at all times. Meaning is discontinuous. Language is a black fag from outer space.