Phototaxis

The positions, strategies and choices of topics are varied and it is therefore difficult to talk about the material in terms of an overall concept. It is perhaps worthwhile to approach the interpretation from other disciplines and philosophical trends that go beyond the concepts of art.

The American philosopher Graham Harman is credited with the theory of object oriented ontology which is based on treating things, objects and living beings in the world as equals. As Gábor Wilhelm, ethnographer at the Museum of Ethnography summarises, 'The distinctive feature of object-oriented ontology as a philosophical approach is that it breaks with the privileged role of representation and the place of the human in the world, placing objects at the centre and treating them on an equal footing with living and human participants'. This creates a kind of non-hierarchical, so-called flat ontology that rejects the privileged place of humans in the world. A group of works in the exhibition fits well with this idea: minimalist photographs, often tending towards abstraction, show objects and strange environments with disorienting qualities. In these compositions things are given a kind of autonomy, "personified" with an aura of agency...

Details from the opening speech by aesthete Flóra Gadó