About
Cabinet Exhibition is a group show that presents the work of forty international emerging artists from over ten different countries. Based on the concept of the early modern âCabinets of Curiosities', this exhibition draws together painting, sculpture, drawing, photography, video and other more contemporary practices, all arranged in a unconventional display. The result is a sort of arrhythmic mosaic intended to present a panoramic view of art production today.
This exhibition aims to be an immersive experience for the curious visitor who will face an unorthodox, eclectic selection of artworks. The dialogue between the artworks displayed will favour new analogies and comparisons, leading the visitors to make fresh associations and come out with new ideas. Whilst preserving the singularity of each of the artworks, this exhibition aims to create an intricate network of connexions and references between the pieces.
The variety of the works presented turns this exhibition into a sort of barometer to see how contemporary artists address current affairs and the way they give response to them. For instance, Yuewei Vivien Zhang and Rui Filipe Antunes focus their interest on social and political issues such as mobility, migration and displacement that affect communities and individuals; other works such as James Wood's Organic primary colours-The lamp of Life (2012) strives for a sustainable painting practice whilst exploring processes, materials, manufacture and our reliance upon machine made objects. Stefanie Herr's series' Mendelssohn (2011) and Sibelius (2011) tackle issues surrounding environmental degradation and the loss of biodiversity due to rampant economic growth. Audiovisual artists John Newman and Eric Souther put into question the fragility of digital data and how we interact with new technologies. The landscape, in its widest meaning, plays a central role in the exhibition. Whether it is natural, artificial or impossible surreal-, the artists construct, re-construct or de-construct reality to create individual narratives. The city, with its surroundings and architectures, becomes the primary source for inspiration for artists such as Lottie Jackson-Eeles, Pablo A. Padilla Jargstorf, Judit Hettema, Ciro Miguel and Stefan Bleekrode when creating their body of work. Others artists such as Julio Pastor's etchings in Exploring Groningen (2009) reflect on how cities are planned and the effects of the inhabitants.
The exhibition also includes the fantastical works of Leah Clough and street artist Rafael Suriani who respectively create imaginative hybrid floras and a sort of anthropomorphic wallpaper figures (already embellishing countless streets in Paris). Rachel Daniels' pseudoscientific As if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen (2011) presents a dissected human body as if seen through the lens of a medical scan. Whilst in Blendscapes (2012) Oriol Angrill's watercolours push forward the limits of the portrait genre, Anna Sebastian's massive Shark (2012) reflects upon concepts such as family and how it is conceived and portrayed by society and the media. In the same line, the highly colourful and intimate home interiors of Hayley Harrison invite us to think about the concept of home in both a physical and psychological sense.
The exhibition also includes the works of Alana Lake, Anna Flemming, Anna Francis, Ariadne Arendt, Banu Colak, Christina Sanders, Clare Ray Shrouder, David Harker, Elizabeth Salcedo, Felice Zhukov, Jonathan Alibone, Karolin Schwab, Leah Clements, Mark Woods, Michael Cousin, Mira Loew, Monika Sutkute, Moritz Fingerhut, Patricia Pisanelli, Philip Cheater, Ruth Rachel Binfor and Sam Nightingale.
