The Problem Is The Answer

The Trapezium Nebula


'Mysteries are not necessarily miracles.'

Johann Wolfgang Goethe

If I Were Roman, Ya Ha Deedle Deedle, Bubba Bubba Deedle Deedle Dum

Johann Wilhelm Tischbein (1751-1829)- Goethe in the Roman Campagna, c. 1848


'A unused life is an early death.'

Johann Wolfgang Goethe

Clouds Are A Dreamer's Best Friend

John Constable (1777-1837) - Cloud Study, 1822


'One symptom of impending nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important.'

Bertrand Russell

Back To Black

Lorna Simpson (b. 1960) - Guarded Conditions, 1989

Toying With Beauty And Beastliness

Action figures for 'Eye of the Beholder', The Twilight Zone, 1960

'A civilised society is one which tolerates eccentricity to the point of doubtful sanity.'

Robert Frost

Martin's Creed

Martin Creed (b. 1968) - Work No. 275, Small Things, 2003


'Reality is what doesn't go away when you stop believing in it.'

Philip K. Dick

Andres Get Your Gun

Andres Serrano (b. 1950) - The Objects of Desire: Virginian Dragoon .44 Magnum (top), Virginian Dragoon .44 Magnum (8), 1992 (middle) and Colt D.A. 38 (3), 1992 (bottom)

A Void Cannot Be Vacuumed

Rachel Whiteread (b. 1963) - Untitled (One Hundred Spaces), 1995


'It is not certain that everything is uncertain.'

Blaise Pascal

Rehousing The Furniture Of The Id

Marcel Dzama (b. 1974) - Untitled, 2006




Marcel Dzama (b. 1974) - Untitled, 2006




Marcel Dzama (b. 1974) - Untitled, 2006




Marcel Dzama (b. 1974) - Untitled, 2006




Marcel Dzama (b. 1974) - Untitled, 2006

'The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless.'

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

How To Make A White Elephant

Maurizio Cattelan (b. 1960) - Not Afraid of Love, 2004

'In the cultural field, authentic provocation serves to indicate an equally authentic and incurable contradiction. The modern rendition of the tragic is precisely the awareness of the irresolubility of the contradiction, and the impossibility of choice. Instead, the reality we are living today is the neutralisation of all conflict transformed by spectacle.'

Giorgio Vertozzi

He Painted Horses, Didn't He?: Part Seven

George Stubbs (1724-1806) - The Duke of Richmond’s First Bull Moose, 1770

He Painted Horses, Didn't He?: Part Six

George Stubbs (1724-1806) - The Lincolnshire Ox, 1790

He Painted Horses, Didn't He?: Part Five

George Stubbs (1724-1806) - Two Indians with a Cheetah and Stag, c. 1765

He Painted Horses, Didn't He?: Part Four

George Stubbs (1724-1806) - A Monkey, 1799

He Painted Horses, Didn't He?: Part Three

George Stubbs (1724-1806) - A Couple of Foxhounds, 1792

He Painted Horses, Didn't He?: Part Two

George Stubbs (1724-1806) - The Nilgai, (1769-71)

He Painted Horses, Didn't He?: Part One

George Stubbs (1724-1806) - Lion Devouring a Horse, 1763

The Prism Of Nostalgia

Thomas Cole - Rainy Season in the Tropics (1866)


'There is nothing dead in nature.'

Seneca

Shooting Candles Of The Night

Joseph Wright of Derby - Firework Display at the Castel Sant' Angelo in Rome (1779)


'The repose of sleep refreshes only the body. It rarely sets the soul at rest. The repose of the night does not belong to us. It is not the possession of our being. Sleep opens within us an inn for phantoms. In the morning we must sweep out the shadows.'

Gaston Bachelard

Pantomimes Of Sin And Sorrow

Kara Walker (b. 1969) - Excavated from the Black Heart of a Negress, 2002 (detail)


'I didn’t want a completely passive viewer. Art means too much to me. To be able to articulate something visually is really an important thing. I wanted to make work where the viewer wouldn’t walk away; he would either giggle nervously, get pulled into history, into fiction, into something totally demeaning and possibly very beautiful. I wanted to create something that looks like you. It looks like a cartoon character, it’s a shadow, it’s a piece of paper, but it’s out of scale. It refers to your shadow, to some extent to purity, to the mirror.'

Kara Walker