In their San Francisco location, Mirus Gallery is showing Aporias, an abstract group exhibition featuring the works of Anatoly Akue, Christian Calabro, Julia Benz, Quintessenz, and Seleka.
“The aporia of art pulled between regression to literal magic or surrender of the mimetic impulse to thing like rationality, dictates its law of motion; the aporia cannot be eliminated. The depth of the process, which every artwork is, is excavated by the irreconcilability of these elements; it must be imported into the idea of art as an image of reconciliation.” Theodor W. Adorno, Esthetic Theory
One of the popular definitions of Aporia is “ an expression of real or pretended doubt or uncertainty especially for rhetorical effect.” Yet there is much more to this word and its use as a tool to penetrate further for truth through a paradoxical questioning and deconstructing of a subject. Aporias is a group exhibition of international artists whose work revolves around the absence of narrative or a representational subject. At a glance, one might call the work abstract, yet these emerging artists' work is detached from a historical sense or the term abstract painter. By leaving representational elements out of their work it has now become a form of representational abstraction. This newfound paradox is the lens by which one should view this group of emerging artists. By removing something and creating a void, a new something is gained. Aporias reflects a new look at emerging artists working within this new post-historical subject of ambiguity, that ask more questions than they answer, and as the title suggests are “a useful expression of doubt.” It is this raising of doubt through painting that each artist exhibiting represents through their work.
