Goldfish Suddenly Dead
Curated by XYZ
April 3rd – May 3rd 2009
Opening April 2nd 2009
Extra City
Centre for Contemporary Art,
Antwerp
Goldfish Suddenly Dead is a short story about loss: actual, remembered or projected. Yet, death itself – the definitive loss – is neither exalted in this exhibition as a figure nor revered as an icon, but rather humbly present as an unviewed, unspoken rhythm.
XYZ are pursuing their preoccupation with the politics of the personal – the individual coming up against insurmountable dead-ends. Every feeling of smallness, emptiness and powerlessness of the self against the weight of experience is addressed through a brief series of poetic, ironic, and occasionally harsh episodes, within a narrative built into the exhibition space, an experiential environment that will take the viewer from darkness to light and back into darkness. This exhibition is interested in loss and absence as a private, absolutely personal process of facing the inevitabilities of demise; a constant, ongoing fact of life, a life that is composed of small yet crushing realisations – like the child who walks full of anticipation into the bedroom to find its goldfish, having twisted and writhed on the floor for hours in its keeper’s absence, lying in a small puddle, suddenly dead.
XYZ are Xenia Kalpaktsoglou, Poka-Yio and Augustine Zenakos, a curatorial trio based in Athens, who founded the Athens Biennale Non Profit Organisation in 2005. They curated the 1st Athens Biennale 2007 DESTROY ATHENS, and are artistic directors of the 2nd Athens Biennale 2009 HEAVEN, opening June 15th 2009.
Hosted by Extra City
Co-produced by Vidisquare and the Athens Biennale Non – Profit Organisation
