Gloria Jarden / Agonie des Realen / Sept 09 – Nov 26, 2022

Agonie des Realen

Gloria Jarden

Sept 09 – November 26, 2022

Agony of the Real

Agonie des Realen II
Gloria Jarden, 2022, Agonie des Realen II, acrylic on canvas, 130 x 90 cm, € 2.420

The exhibition shows the recent artistic examination of a theme that has kept the artist Gloria Jarden very much busy since the 80s after reading of Jean Baudrillard’s “Agony of the Real”. In his book, Baudrillard describes a simulation (simulacra) of the real from many different perspectives. He states that through the habit of pure images, people can no longer recognize the real, the original, the facts. More than 30 years ago, she considered this thesis too provocative, too fictitious. Remember,  at that time, the digital revolution was still to come. From today’s perspective and with the current knowledge about the digitalized world, the “agony of the real” seems to have been largely accomplished. Only a few people manage to see through the matrix still recognizing the original, the facts, as the real and the image as a pure reflection of the real.

In Jarden’s artistic work, the blind spots of cognition are painted over by white paint and only fragments allow the original to shine through. Thus marked, the fragments of the original yield only an incomplete image of the original.