“Evidentiary Realism,” the title of this exhibition, is a term coined by its curator, Paolo Cirio. It refers to art that, in his words, “portrays and reveals evidence from complex social systems.” The works in this fourteen-person show heighten our awareness of the foul social and political infrastructures that seem to be dominating much of the world today.
Navine G. Khan-Dossos’s series “Expanding and Remaining,” 2016, uses ISIS’s English print magazine as a source for colorful, systematic abstract paintings, rendering the basic graphic structure of the periodical’s layout sans text. Nearby is Josh Begley’s Information of Note, 2014, a collage of photographic documentation of Muslim-owned venues in New York, taken from the NYPD Demographics Unit—a secret surveillance program that was leaked to the press in 2011. One of the more challenging works in the show is Seamless Transitions, 2015, James Bridle’s 3-D video tour of immigration, detention, trial, and deportation sites throughout the UK. Their sterile architecture, without people or sound, offers up a painfully detached view of places where fates, often capriciously, are being determined.
This profoundly affecting presentation is the first in a series of shows that will focus on evidentiary realism. The project has an online presence as well, with a catalogue of artworks, related texts, and an open invitation to artists to apply for future exhibitions. In Hannah Arendt’s Life of the Mind (1978), she writes: “The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.” Making up one’s mind about the devastating effects of political machinations is crucial