Today’s Melancholia
an exhibition refering to Dürer’s famed engraving explores artists’ enduring interests in geometric forms and the language of abstraction, dispensing with the pursuit of perfection in exchange for beautifully unrealizable concepts and relentless experimenation.
Concept
The famed German Renaissance artist Albrecht Dürer made an engraving called Melancholia I around 1514. Dürer’s scene is puzzling, and it has captured the attention of artists across the ages. It shows the winged personification of Melancholy, one of the four humors, crestfallen with her head resting wearily on her hand. She fiddles with a caliper, a device used to measure linear dimensions of objects, and is seated among other tools associated with geometry, once widely known as one of the seven liberal arts fundamental to artistic creation. Melancholy, there she is, Dürer’s stand in for the beleaguered artist figure, beset with immeasurable imagination and ungovernable ingenuity in a world where artistic perfection measured using the tools of reason.
Today’s relentless strive toward perfection where ideas scrutinized and analyzed for every possible outcome has eroded the pursuit of ambitious, visionary and beautifully unrealizable concepts. Our weary world—it shows signs of fatigue, with originality looking comparably dejected as Dürer’s figure of Melancholy.
Today’s Melancholia is an exhibition that would refer to Dürer’s enigmatic engraving to explore artists’ enduring interest in geometric forms where the language of mathematics and geometry sit alongside the crystalizing structures of polygons, octahedrons, and dodecahedrons valuing above all innovation, chance, and uncertainty.
The famed German Renaissance artist Albrecht Dürer made an engraving called Melancholia I around 1514. Dürer’s scene is puzzling, and it has captured the attention of artists across the ages. It shows the winged personification of Melancholy, one of the four humors, crestfallen with her head resting wearily on her hand. She fiddles with a caliper, a device used to measure linear dimensions of objects, and is seated among other tools associated with geometry, once widely known as one of the seven liberal arts fundamental to artistic creation. Melancholy, there she is, Dürer’s stand in for the beleaguered artist figure, beset with immeasurable imagination and ungovernable ingenuity in a world where artistic perfection measured using the tools of reason.
Today’s relentless strive toward perfection where ideas scrutinized and analyzed for every possible outcome has eroded the pursuit of ambitious, visionary and beautifully unrealizable concepts. Our weary world—it shows signs of fatigue, with originality looking comparably dejected as Dürer’s figure of Melancholy.
Today’s Melancholia is an exhibition that would refer to Dürer’s enigmatic engraving to explore artists’ enduring interest in geometric forms where the language of mathematics and geometry sit alongside the crystalizing structures of polygons, octahedrons, and dodecahedrons valuing above all innovation, chance, and uncertainty.
- Carl D’Alvia
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Carol Bove
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Tom Burr
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Torkwase Dyson
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Iman Issa
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Adam Linder
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Robert Longo
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Josiah McElheny
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Shahryar Nashat
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Kiki Smith
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Tony Smith
- Robert Smithson