The Gam Gallery is pleased to present:

AN/AESTHETIC

A two-part exhibition featuring the work of fourth-year Bachelor of Fine Arts students from The University of British Columbia.

Part II: AN/AESTHETICS

November 5 – 19, 2011

Reception: Thursday, November 10, 7 to 10 pm

Kathryn Alder, Paige Armstrong, Sophia Bartholomew, Liesel Baumann, John Baziuk, Samantha Bullis, Dan Fagan, Lily Jones, Cliff Sun, Monique Wells, Gamze Yalçin, Jimmy Yao
In “Anaesthetics: Walter Benjamin’s Artwork Essay Reconsidered,” Susan Buck Morss summarizes Benjamin’s concerns at the end of “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” as “the crisis in cognitive experience caused by the alienation of the senses [that] makes it possible for humanity to view its own destruction with enjoyment.”

While for Buck Morss a ‘crisis in cognition’ becomes a concern for the possible reemergence of fascism, it can also speak to humanity in shock, witnessing the destruction of the planet – and by extension its own destruction – and doing nothing.

Buck Morss uses the term anaesthetic to describe the sensory negotiation of overwhelming stimulation: seeking anesthesia in our immersive use technological devices and in the consumption of drugs and alcohol.  Numbness is understood as a defense mechanism and as a consequence of our postindustrial, technologically altered society.

This collaboratively produced installation – an/aesthetic – may at first appear to be symptomatic of this type of paralysis: the posters in the gallery windows say as much, and the sparsely hung ‘computer print-outs,’ punctuated by a stray power tool, keep the appearance of an incomplete ‘mock up’ for the exhibition. When approached, the individual works reveal themselves to be carefully considered, and aesthetically engaged at a more intimate level.

This exhibition is presented with support from the Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory at The University of British Columbia.