Bring your tin-foil hats! Mirus Gallery SF presents CON:THEORY, NoMe Edonna's solo exhibition opening this Friday, August 16, with a reception from 7 to 10 pm.
NoMe Edonna is a self-taught California artist working primarily in the fields of painting and drawing, with style rooted in Dada/Surrealism, Art Nouveau, Symbolism, and Graffiti. In recent years, his work has become increasingly focused on social, political and environmental concerns as well as inquiries of science, technology, and ancient civilizations.
The idea that a group of people, lurking behind the scenes to control the world and keep the masses in the dark about what's really going on, is no longer a fringe subject; it's become a significant tenet of contemporary meme culture. The combustion of global events crying honest, transparent explanation has given rise to a growing community that presumes there’s much more to ‘official’ stories presented by the mainstream media.
With curious mind and a modicum of research, most can find gaping holes in official reports, such as the JFK Assassination, 9/11, and government knowledge of UFOs. The more information uncovered by researchers, the more we percieve a backlash of distraction, spin, and misinformation unleashed by mass media. In fact, the term ‘conspiracy theorist’ was popularized by the C.I.A. in the 1960s, after a surge of public distrust in the official Warren Report findings. As a result, the term became a label of ridicule for anyone embracing a skeptical viewpoint and seeking facts about unreliable and misleading events disclosed in official reports.
Questions quickly arise as to how, why and by whom such conspiracies could be carried out. A lack of what some might consider credible, verifiable evidence is often a point of contention. Some see this lack of reliable information as being a fundamental facet in the efficacy of such conspiracies being carried out and kept from public knowledge. Our beliefs and opinions are based on the information we've acquired a particular subject, but unfortunately, it’s often difficult to trace information back to its origin to determine whether or it's factual, biased, or just plain false. To make matters even more unclear, there is a human tendency to believe things simply because whether, by face or fancy, regardless of the information available, we want to. So anything goes, personal theories become dogma and social divisions harden and multiply.
Nevertheless, search for truth and the meaning is a fundamental human quest. Predominant answers to such questions are often fed to us in the form of religion, corporate-sponsored science, and unchecked governmental authority. However, independent analysis often reveals these to be the very sources of the conspiracies themselves. From this point of view, the history we’ve been taught, the news we see and read each day, the unnecessary products we’re subliminally coerced to buy, the manufactured celebrities were encouraged to idolize, could all be viewed as cogs in some grand mechanism which keeps the majority of the population in a constant state of blind, entertained complacency and cyclical consumerism. A giant CON-game played out on the masses of humanity for the benefit and safety of a few.
CON:THEORY reflects the most prevalent conspiratorial questions and ideas now swirling around our greater collective consciousness. Through various approaches and styles, the work attempts to bring curiosity, intrigue and humor without any attempts to make solid judgments or final verdicts. This, of course, is up to you...
CON:Theory opens at Mirus Gallery SF on August 16th and is on view through September 7th, 2019.
