Kritisch Realisme (Critical Realism)

Text accompanying an exhibition held at Perspektief Gallery
entitled: 'Critical Realism'. The various debates on
Postmodernism have brought 'a renewed interest in cultural
issues and in the part that art and photography can play in
opposing and subverting hegemonic representations'. The author
introduces the works of Alan Sekula, Martha Rosler, Gretchen
Bender, David Wojnarowicz, Donald Moffett, Brian Weil, Nancy
Burson, Alfredo Jaar, Carrie Mae Weems, Andres Serrano, Louise
Lawler, and Lewis Stein. The author's conclusions: 'Both
photography and language may be inadequate systems of
description, but they remain powerful means of representation.
The task of the artists (in this exhibition) has been to deploy
these means in ways that open up the possibility of other
discourses, other voices and other social practices, in order to
counteract the sanitized version of reality imposed by the
controllers of America's conservative agenda'.


Citaten:
Sekula, A.: The Body and the Archive (October 39, 1986)
Rosler, M.: 3 Works (1981)
Clark, T.J.: The Painting of Modern Life (1985)
Lyotard, J.-F.: The Postmodern Condition (1984)
Jameson, F.: Postmodernism (New Left Review 146, 1984)
Gibbs, M.: The Graph of Photography (in: Een woord voor het Beeld, 1989)
Sekula, A.: Labor's Necropolis (unp. 1990)
Burgin, V.: Thinking Photography (1982)
Gibbs, M.: Documentary and its Doscontents (Perspektief 23, 1986)
Wojnarowicz, D.: Tongues of Flame (exh.cat. 1990)
Saids, E.: Orientalism
Grynsztejn, M.: Alfredo Jaar (exh.cat. 1990)
Lippard, L.: Andres Serrano (Art in America, april 1990)
Solomon-Godeau, A.: Living with Contradictions (Screen v.28,i.3, 1987)
Debord, G.: Cosiety of the Spectacle (Wedge 2, 1982)