Untitled(Watermelons)

apex art, NY

Proposal Title: Untitled(Watermelons)

Submission:

“ Because of its restless, unfixed boundaries, its multiplicities, and the state of “permanent transition” within which it is practiced and communicated, contemporary art tends to be much more resistant to global totalization. ” Okwui Enwezor

"All love affairs happen in foreign cities. “ Jalal Toufic

On the extreme South West of fortress Europe there is a city where watermelons fall instead of bombs. The city is known also for its windy, cosmopolitan nature that welcomes the visitors. The Atlantic Ocean connects it with the Cape Verd Islands in West Africa, with Rio de Janeiro, Brasil and with NYC, through infinite migrations. Unlike in the early 20th century, when the passangers used to travel by boat, the metamorphosis now occurs in the air, the most transitional of all zones.

In this largerly mixed city once existed an art space called Societé Anonyme(after Duchamp's organization of course) , where artists from different continents and time zones gathered to discuss and show their work. The scope of the space was wide-angle, transnational, postcolonial... global. It functioned as a kind of a platform that enabled future collaborations on different scales worldwide.

During the WW2 the city represented a refuge for the artists, intelectuals and homosexuals running from nazi Germany before departing to NYC. There is a photographer- sharp, unfocused and feminine, who reminds me of this city, totally unaware of its chaotic nature.

Watermelons are the connecting element between the artworks in this exhibition, while the general framework is provided by the artists' connection to the unknown metropola, rather invisible on the artworld's map. The red fruit with black seeds and green skin is linked to the free-floating desire in Tsai Ming-Liang's The Wayward Cloud; it takes the form of something far more flamboyant in DJ/Rupture's weekly radio show Mudd Up! that will be transmitted live in the gallery; and becomes unpredictable when the photographer Masha Tsvar gets a carte blanche to produce a new work.

The exhibition's title Untitled(Watermelons) refers to a tendency in contemporary art to mask the title of an artwork in order to keep its aura untouched and can be understood in this case as an attempt at or a follower of the institutional critique, this time placed in a tropical environment. What we disguise here is the meaning of watermelons for the artworld in general and the audience in particular. While the time for a new upheaval, following the sequence of liberation movements of the 20th century, has arrived not only for the Arab world(to fight its autocratic regimes) , but on global level.