Art and the Invisible 1/3
The limits of our seeing have continued to dissolve through unflagging technological development; we have striven to make visible what was formerly not and reveal its hidden wonder for centuries. While the idea of the primacy of vision might still lurk in our habitual seeing, not a few artists have thrown out caveats as to its fruitlessness for decades, such as those featured in the 2012 exhibition at the Hayward Gallery in London, exploring diverse invisibilities as well as the ways in which they affect or augment our non-visual methods of knowing. Invisible to us is not necessarily absent or empty. Rather, the invisible is filled with a richness obtained outside vision, be it perceptual or imaginative, the exhaustion of which has made possible a range of multi-sensorial and critical engagements with the world that surrounds us.
This session focuses on a range of works and images that collectively foster a layered understanding of the invisible as an artistic material, a form of experience, and a medium of thought and practice. Examining their use, exploration, and interrogation of the invisible delineates its ever-increasing presence in art as well as in contemporary life, the latter in which many aspects, as media theorist Henrik Gustafsson puts it, become less and less observable for humans. Visualization is not always tantamount to elucidation. Should this claim be more true and imminent than ever, both aesthetically and beyond, the session, through a unique array of revealing case studies, seeks to concentrate on the specificities, nuances, and dynamics of what often goes unseen.