Exhibition with works by: Eric Bell & Kristoffer Frick (1985 St. Catharines, Canada; 1985 Nuertingen, Germany. Both live in Frankfurt); The Infinite Library (Daniel Gustav Cramer & Haris Epaminonda) (1975 Düsseldorf, Germany; 1980 Nicosia, Cyprus. Both live in Berlin); huber.huber (1975 Münsterlingen, Switzerland. Both live in Zurich); Leslie Hewitt & Matt Keegan (1977 Saint Albans, New York; 1976 Manhasset, New York. Both live in New York) and Nashashibi/Skaer (1973 Croydon; 1975 Cambridge. Both live in London)
‘
The Garden of Forking Paths’ brought together the work of five artist-duos to consider duality, simultaneity, saturation and proliferation. The exhibition pursued, on the one hand, the implications of two individuals working together as a single author-function and, on the other, operated alongside artwork concerned with the reproducibility of images. In part a hermeneutical maze – itself curated and hosted by duos (
Latitudes and
Maisterravalbuena, respectively) ‘
The Garden of Forking Paths’ highlighted a condition where decisions and imagery are at least twice mediated.
The duos of the exhibition were each composed of different personal and professional dynamics – the artists are variously exclusive collaborators, related by birth, occasional accomplices, couples in life, and so on. Comprising works using editorial, photographic, sculptural, procedural, collage and appropriation techniques, ‘
The Garden of Forking Paths’ was concerned with such conditions in the context of the synthesis, modulation and reuse of images over time.
The exhibition took its title from the 1941 short story by
Jorge Luis Borges which centres on an apparently unfathomable novel and a mysterious labyrinth which are revealed to be one and the same. Written as if a statement by a double agent, this dense mystery tale proposes reality as a profusion of divergent alternatives and dimensions, a saturation of all possible outcomes.
Eric Bell & Kristoffer Frick presented two works ('
Untitled' (2007) and '
The pleasure of moving from place to place' (2008)) which affirm the fundamentally illusory nature of photography. ‘
The Infinite Library’ (2007–ongoing), two books from which were presented, is an expanding, seemingly arbitrary archive by Daniel Gustav Cramer & Haris Epaminonda inspired in part by the writings of Borges.
huber.huber’s monochromatic series ‘dark grounds’ (2007-8) juxtaposed photojournalism and wildlife studies to replicated the dislocation so crucial to Surrealism. Leslie Hewitt & Matt Keegan’s '
CMYK Floral' (2007) consisted of the presentation of weekly monochromatic flower arrangements, corresponding in sequence with the inks used in four colour printing. Nashashibi/Skaer presented eighteen photographs from the installation '
Pygmalion Workshop' (2008) inspired by the myth of Pygmalion in which he sculpts an ivory figure which is brought to life by Aphrodite to become his lover.
