Introduction

"Neither Either Nor Or" brings together a collection of works by nine artists, ranging in form from video and film installation to photography and performance. The link between the works is due to common structural features rather than a particular issue: all address questions of readability, borderline cases of understanding and the understandable in a radical way.

The works make deliberate use of complex, in some cases contradictory codes and references that produce an overabundance of possible interpretations, thus preventing us from cutting to the “core” of meaning or focus on forms of disappearance, forgetting, disguise, and transformation. Language as an instrument, with which we produce and decode meaning, organise and systematically categorise our experiences, and as a medium of an “other” meaning – nonsense, paradox, deception – plays a key role here: word and gesture appear as infinitely flexible generators of order and diversion.

As such, the exhibition fundamentally reflects the relationship of language and action to space, the dialogue between the space of the art work and the space of the viewer. The works constantly create a sense of uncertainty as to what we see, how we see it, and where we stand. By constantly forcing the viewer to adopt a new position, they assume an almost performative dimension. The reflective distance from where inside/outside, true/false, neither/nor, and either/or appear to be alternatives dissipates.