Peter Sloterdijk has proposed antigravitation as a defining characteristics of modernity. This term indicates not only an era of overwhelming technological and scientific advance, but even more importantly the socio-cultural condition of contemporaneity. Sloterdijk’s observation corresponds to the words of one of my favourite writers, Kundera, who in his most famous novel described the condition of unbearable lightness of being:

The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become. Conversely, the absolute absence of burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements as free as they are insignificant. What then shall we choose? Weight or lightness? (M. Kundera, Unbearable Lightness of Being)

This introduction gives the idea of a dilemma we face in our daily choices. Translated into the domain of fine arts, it reflects the ongoing struggle to define the relationship between art and reality. Seen in the course of art history as contradictory terms, art and reality has faced the attempts at their reconciliation within the modernist project. Once the era of globalization and mass culture arrived, those attempts have been proclaimed a failure. The postmodernist relativism blurred the meaning of the terms art and reality alone, and comparing them both to simulacra.

Where are we standing now?

The only thing we can state at the moment is – there is no one answer to this question. Since the postmodernism, art has dispersed in many directions and created micro enclaves, which make it hard to generalise – at least for us, who are in the middle of this ongoing development, unable to fully distance ourselves from it. The selection of artists for this exhibition reflects this diversity and provides a ground for an interesting discussion. All of them are reworking elements from what is generally considered to be reality, taking different starting points and using various media