Detouched
A.K. Burns (US), Alice Channer (UK), Sunah Choi (KR), Dennis Oppenheim (US), Seth Price (US)
25 January–30 March 2013
Opening: Thursday, 24 January
Project Arts Centre
39 East Essex Street
Temple Bar, Dublin 2, Ireland
gallery [at] projectartscentre.ie
www.projectartscentre.ie
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Guest curated by Anthony Huberman (US/CH).
Detouched isn’t a word. As a word that isn’t a word, it exists somewhere between retouched and detached. It’s also fairly close to untouched, which means that it has a lot to do with touch. It might be best understood as describing a detached sense of touch, or an act of touching that doesn’t involve an act of touching, however paradoxical that may sound.
Most mornings, for example, I drink a cup of coffee and touch The New York Times. I don’t hold it in my hands, but I pinch and drag it with my fingers. I don’t read it as much as I skim through it, and this involves a fair amount of touching. It’s an interactive, tactile, and rather comfortable experience. But no ink rubs off on my fingers, because I’m not actually touching The New York Times. I’m touching The New York Times without touching The New York Times. So perhaps it’s best to say that most mornings, over coffee, I almost touch The New York Times.
Part of what’s impressive about the Internet is that it’s infinite, immaterial, and uncontainable—it’s untouchable—but I still touch it many times a day. I’m touching information that exists in the cloud—a cloud that isn’t actually a cloud—and the entire world, as the saying goes, is at my fingertips. After a century of technology dedicated to inventing tools that replace manual labour, we find ourselves brought back to the hand—the first, oldest, and most basic human tool. It makes sense: the digit and the digital make a natural pair.
But today, to touch doesn’t mean the same thing it used to. Touching an object no longer requires being next to it, but involves being far away from it. By merging the hand with the machine, contemporary technology generates a detached sense of proximity, or a sense of detouch—it not only incorporates but also negates, prevents, and replaces one sense of touch with another. Detouched is about the distance of touch.
For more information about the works click here.
Please join us on Thursday 24 January at 5pm, when guest curator Anthony Huberman will introduce Detouched in a walk-through of the exhibition.
Project Arts Centre is a multidisciplinary arts centre in the heart of Dublin, Ireland. The visual arts programme commissions new exhibitions, both on and offsite, with leading artists from around the world. Current offsite exhibitions include Sarah Browne (IE) How to Use Fool’s Gold, at Galway Arts Centre from December 7 to January 31, 2013, with a national tour of Mikala Dwyer (AU) beginning early 2013, visiting multiple venues across Ireland. Forthcoming exhibitions at Project Arts Centre include Garden, a solo exhibition by Niamh O’Malley (IE).
Gallery exhibition hours: Monday–Saturday 11–8pm
Admission to the visual arts at Project Arts Centre is always free.
Project Arts Centre is supported by the Arts Council and Dublin City Council.
