Agonie des Realen
Gloria Jarden
Sept 09 – October 30, 2022
Agony of the Real
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.