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THREE POLISH ARTISTS:
SUBLIME
FEBRUARY 16 - MARCH 25, 2006 Sublime is a slippery little word. For centuries, endless texts have strained and stretched trying to grab hold of this word in an effort to unravel, in singular terms, the philosophical knot it represents. So much so, in fact, that presenting eight artists under the vast baggage-laden rubric of the 'sublime' would appear to be a risky gesture. Jan Baracz, Ellen Harvey, Dominik Lejman, Dorian McFarland, Brigitte Nahon, Trine Nedreaas, Christian Tomaszewski, Lydia Venieri and Gregg Woolard, however, glide through the distant boundaries of the sublime and even reposition a few. Often pitted against the exalted yet presumably simple clarity of beauty, the sublime is popularly conceived as its dark, inexpressible, incomprehensible cousin, or more aptly, its argumentative parent. The works represented here hint at this encompassing presence; grand issues are being tackled but with beauty in their employ rather than in opposition. In varying degrees, these artists lean towards a cool, subtle aesthetic appearing to favor reason; yet all the while we can glimpse a poignancy bubbling under the surface. Kant considered the imagination a tool for the mind's eventual preeminence in the experience of the sublime. This group of artists seems to linger a bit longer on the imagination, one that is inextricable from either logic or emotion.
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