creation/destruction
12th April - 23rd May 2013
Holden Gallery, Manchester (UK)
Anya Gallaccio
Mark Lewis
Rut Blees Luxemburg
Often, creation and destruction are taken as polar opposites, elemental forces which are permanently in conflict. Rather than following this line of division and disconnection, the exhibition looks to examine more imaginative approaches, the ways in which creation and destruction might merge, overlap and cross over. The process of making something new can be as much about removal as it is about production - the ways in which ideas, images and perceptions have to be cleared away before anything useful can begin.
The works in the exhibition explore different aspects of the relationship between creation and destruction. The exhibition looks at works which establish a thread between the two forces in order to produce something new. Anya Gallaccio deeply explores the connections between decay, materials, temporality and aesthetics. Remade for the show, Untitled (Black candles) and Untitled (White candles) will be destroyed straight after the end of Creation/Destruction and Preserve (Chateau) will decay during the exhibition under the eyes of the viewers, privileged witness of a
paradox here considered a creative process. Red and Green are instead the result of the destruction of Red on Green, an installation of thousands decaying red roses. The very different approaches of each of the artists leads the spectator towards a more complex and nuanced view. Mark Lewis’ films North Circular and Isosceles, both set in London, portray ruins of a modernist building in the first case, and public restroom in the second. Lewis’ representation of abandoned ruins explores time and space and his subjects evoque a sense of decay and duration, in contrapposition to the chaos
that inhabits their surroundings. Rut Blees Luxemburg’s photographs explore destruction, decay, erosion in connection to icons belonging to our urban and iconoclast landscape. The experience is designed to set a more fruitful dialogue between creation and destruction.
Co-curated with Dr. Steven Gartside.