OUR TWO CHARITY PROJECTS
ABOUT THE WORK
Teach us to Outgrow our Madness (2020) by Alfredo Jaar takes the shape of a square mirror, covered in black with only the words “teach us to outgrow our madness” left bare. Jaar often appropriates famous quotes from philosophers and literary figures to place them in a different context to challenge and reconsider their meaning. The work belongs to a group of works, which Jaar began in 1995, after the artist travelled to Rwanda where he became a witness to the genocide of the Tutsi minority population. What happened in Rwanda and how it was reported—or rather how this reporting failed to find an audience around the world led Jaar to question the whole notion of the use of photography and images towards political ends. As a result, the artist created a series of dematerialized works, installations and public interventions that explore the limitations of art in depicting atrocities and humanitarian crises.
The words “teach us to outgrow our madness” were first used by Jaar in 1995 and originate from the poem Commentary (1939) by the British-American poet W.H. Auden. In 1969 they were taken up by the Japanese writer Kenzaburo Oe, who used them as the title for his anthology of short stories. Oe‘s stories are his attempt to give meaning to the convictions and actions of the war generation, especially those of his own father. With Jaar, a third generation raises the question of responsibility for the ongoing atrocities in this world. He places his plead for reason right in front of us, while we are trying to catch sight in the mirror of our own reflection.
ALFREDO JAAR
Alfredo Jaar is an artist, architect, and filmmaker who lives and works in New York. He is known as one of the most uncompromising, compelling, and innovative artists working today.
His work has been shown extensively around the world. He has participated in the Biennales of Venice (1986, 2007, 2009, 2013), Sao Paulo (1987, 1989, 2010) as well as Documenta in Kassel (1987, 2002).
Important individual exhibitions include The New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York (1992); Whitechapel, London (1992); The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (1995); The Museum of Contemporary Art, Rome (2005) and Moderna Museet, Stockholm (1994). Major recent surveys of his work have taken place at Musée des Beaux Arts, Lausanne (2007); Hangar Bicocca, Milan (2008); Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlinische Galerie and Neue Gesellschaft fur bildende Kunst e.V., Berlin (2012); Rencontres d’Arles (2013); KIASMA, Helsinki (2014) and Yorkshire Sculpture Park, UK (2017).
Alfredo Jaar has realized more than seventy public interventions around the world. Over sixty monographic publications have been published about his work. He became a Guggenheim Fellow in 1985 and a MacArthur Fellow in 2000. He received the Hiroshima Art Prize in 2018 and the Hasselblad Award in 2020.
Photo: Jee Eun Esther Jang
ABOUT THE PROJECT
From his image archive An Ongoing Collection of Screengrabs with Reassuring Subtitles with currently 1.200 screenshots from American TV series and movies with subtitles such as “It will be ok” or “Don’t worry, Babe”, Allan McCollum has chosen 400 motifs to be printed on canvas, each framed in black wood and measuring 10.4 x 17.2 x 1.6 in (26.3 x 43.8 x 4 cm). This group of works is especially designed for Galerie Thomas Schulte to be offered to friends, supporters and interested clients as a sign of consolation and to financially help two highly acclaimed art institutions, the ICA Miami and C/O Berlin Foundation, to cope in these difficult times. A selection of the works will be shown at Galerie Thomas Schulte in an individual exhibition from May 22 through July 11, 2020.
Allan McCollum began this project in 2015 as a visual essay about the meaning of closeness and comfort in our society. He wants it to serve as a reminder that it is through the telling and sharing of stories that we perceive the world. It is also a critique of Hollywood and populist rhetoric which both instrumentalize our emotions by promoting the narrative of a hero coming to the rescue, while in reality we depend on being part of a community of family, friends, neighbors and colleagues. All of the screenshots from films and movies amassed by McCollum depict people in situations of great uncertainty and distress being comforted with words of support that spell out in the subtitles. But while anxiety and worry are feelings that are individually and subjectively felt and experienced by all of us, the encouraging phrases on the screen through endless repetition soon become somewhat meaningless.
ALLAN MCCOLLUM
Allan McCollum, born in Los Angeles in 1944, is an internationally acclaimed conceptual artist whose career began in the late 1960s. For most of us he is known as the creator of important work groups such as Over Ten Thousand Individual Works, Plaster Surrogates, Perfect Vehicles and The Shapes Project, which can be found in many museum collections, including MoMA, the Art Institute of Chicago, the San Francisco MoMA, Centre Pompidou and various others around the world.
Aspects of identity and the relationship between the individual and mass culture are at the heart of many of McCollum’s works. He has, over the span of his career, carried out numerous projects involving individuals and craftsmen across towns and communities in the US, taking a special interest in common, everyday life, popular culture, the aspect of the individual and processes of mass production.
AVAILABLE WORKS
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Allan McCollum: An Ongoing Collection of Screengrabs with Reassuring Subtitles -ok902
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Allan McCollum: An Ongoing Collection of Screengrabs with Reassuring Subtitles -ok884
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Allan McCollum: An Ongoing Collection of Screengrabs with Reassuring Subtitles -ok870
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- Regular price
- €700,00
- Sale price
- €700,00
- Regular price
-
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- per
Sold out -
Allan McCollum: An Ongoing Collection of Screengrabs with Reassuring Subtitles -ok861
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- Regular price
- €700,00
- Sale price
- €700,00
- Regular price
-
- Unit price
- per
Sold out
CONTACT
Galerie Thomas Schulte GmbH
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mail@galeriethomasschulte.de
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