"Archetypes resemble the beds of rivers: dried up because the water has deserted them, though it may return at any time. An archetype is something like an old watercourse along which the water of life flowed for a time, digging a deep channel for itself. The longer it flowed the deeper the channel, and the more likely it is that sooner or later the water will return."
― C.G. Jung
"The essential reason for my loneliness is that I don't even know where I belong. I was supposed to be part of a story, but I fell from there like a leaf in autumn."
― Orhan Pamuk
(My Name is Red)
I've envisioned this exhibition as a journey through a wilderness. Not a geographical wilderness, but a wilderness of the mind. There is a lot of disconnection expressed in these works: a disconnection from society, from roots; from linear histories. There is confusion: a confusion of geographies and cultures, learned expectation and visual disjunction; the gardens of delight that border the danger of frontier.
Personally, at this stage in my life, I find myself disconnected from the predominant political and philosophical ideologies of our time. I cling to belief in (The) Enlightenment (both the Euro-historical and spiritual meanings of this word), logic and science guide me, yet I allow myself to accept worlds beyond the scope of reason. I am both an avid liberal and a reactionary. I have not defined myself as such, but contemporary society has. I accept the failings of Eurocentric and Asian capitalism, yet recoil at the plague of Postmodernism and Marxist dogma that seems to have infected the thoughts of worldwide Academies. Leftism scares me. Populism scares me. Conservatism is untenable. In other words, I am in a no-man's-land of independent beliefs, struggling to find a path forward in the rapidly morphing reality of our times.