GODS AND GOODS
Spirituality and mass confusion
Villa Manin Centre for Contemporary Art
19.04-28.09.2008
Curated by Francesco Bonami and Sarah Cosulich Canarutto
In the past art and religion have been indissolubly linked, considering that only a few centuries ago did the artists really free themselves from the wishes and the necessities of the commissioners. But what is the relationship between art and religion today? Maybe it would be correct to say that they are complementary: one asks questions, the other gives answers. What brings them closer it is not their consequentiality but, on the contrary, their common source of doubt.
Today doubt is the subject of art as well as the origin of religion. This exhibition wishes to observe the way in which, through doubt, the artists challenge the stereotypes and the limitations of the concept of God to substitute it with many different and infinite question marks.
God and Goods aims to open a dialogue with the topic of religion being it an immense, controversial and unresolved debate but also a concept open to new and various forms of interpretation. This show originates from the principle that God can be Goods, can be What determines things, can be a System, a Force, a Research, a Consequence, an Idea in constant and unstoppable oscillation.
The works of the approximately 30 artists presented in the exhibition deal with the concept of religion from a series of indirect point of views: they can confront its dictates with irreverence, they can analyse its dynamics and mechanisms or they can propose, ironically or not, alternative models.
The artwork does not reach some conclusions but walks the path from the opposite direction placing back the individual before the most primordial question. Art, like religion, meets an urgency and a necessity and this show wishes to read necessity with its elusive sources and indefinable consequences.