The exhibition halls of the Ca’ Foscari library open their doors to Hybris: Hybrids and Monsters in Contemporary Art, organized by MediaArtLab CYLAND.
On display are works by 19 artists from Italy, Russia, Great Britain, France, Germany, Belgium, and the United States, who have explored one of the fundamental mechanisms of society: the connection of what cannot be connected, the issues in the relationship between what is “one’s own” and what belongs to “the other.”
The exhibition, curated by Silvia Burini, Giuseppe Barbieri, Anna Frants, and Elena Gubanova, with assistance from Angela Bianco, Alessia Cavallaro, and Varvara Egorova, brings together new technologies and old media to create a space where the personal territory of each work is not defined, but merges and interacts, generating new “hybrid fruits” of artistic perception.
Structured cyberspaces, post-Soviet reflections, hybrids of geometry and classical art, of art and life – this wide array of objects presented by the artists suggests that this theme was as relevant 5,000 years ago as it is today. In the modern world, the concept of the “hybrid” has become an inalienable part of daily life. Mechanisms, computers, products, clothing, educational methods, spaces, bodies, languages, and even instruments of war are all hybrid.
Etymologically, the Greek term hybris – from which the Latin hybridus is derived – means sin and arrogance, hubris. The early Greek philosophers saw humans and nature as a single entity. Separation from nature was accompanied by pride and daring (hybris), which led to chaos and destruction. Such behavior (Icarus, Phaethon, Ajax) is described in Greek mythology as a constant human striving toward a higher dimension, relentlessly punished by the gods. If we consider the modern “technological revolution” in this light, then humankind’s effort to conquer the world at all costs and to create hybrid prosthetics for everyday life is, in every sense, modern hybris.
However, in contemporary art, this effort proves fruitful, sweeping away the cliché of the world’s “vile ordinariness.” Rebellion, protest, and audacity bring us back to the clash between order and chaos; they place us unflinchingly before the mirror of our identity. It seems that artists, more radically than anyone else, offer us a juxtaposition and exchange with the “otherness” entering our everyday lives. What does the future hold if machines become an extension of the human species? What happens if technology no longer needs humans?
The dynamic nature of culture is the result of the coexistence of different languages in a shared cultural space: the more crowded and saturated the cultural space is, the more complex the system it generates—and the more accurate its representation of the world around us becomes.
Useful Information for Hybris: Hybrids and Monsters in Contemporary Art:
Venue: Ca’ Foscari Zattere, Cultural Flow Zone, Zattere, Dorsoduro 1392, 30123 Venice
Public Transport Stop: Zattere
Dates: On view until June 28, 2017
Opening Hours: TUE–SAT 10:00–19:00 | SUN 15:00–20:00
TGcom24 June 7, 2017