Dism-surd-ab:

Violations of Casual Reasoning

Performance, magic, dance, and experimental essay—this is Cycle 10.
Click through each artist's name or photo to learn more about them.

“dism-surd-ab” Violations of Casual Reasoning’s exhibition at House Conspiracy invites artists to respond to what Absurdism means to them. A philosophy based on the belief that the universe is illogical and meaningless, and the search for order brings the individual into conflict with the universe, Absurdism’s success resides in its failure of rationalizing the irrational.

To make sense of the senseless in ‘dism-surd-ab’, the showcase brings together three artists with distinctive practices.

Emmalyn Hawthorne’s whimsical bricolage artwork reimagines the surrounding reality. Drawing upon her own attempts to willful self-deception, Hawthorne engages with space and objects within space or their absence thereof to investigate make-meaning processes. In Things to have on a night stand, Hawthorne applies collage strategies to paper, text, light, and space, creating an installation work that naturally flows from one exhibition room to the other. By using text and image together, Hawthorne convert simple found imagery into moving art works. Creating material pieces from virtual images of pin boards, Hawthorne engages with desires of women whom she has never met, pointing to their sincerity and urgency, but also to the strangeness and inadequacy of the way in which they are expressed.

Huon Kane’s interactive computer work combines animation, video and AI software and data technology. Seeking to modify traditional art forms, Kane launches Television Conspiracy, a sentient TV which uses real a hidden camera to track the audiences faces, and displaying real-time response in text form of real-time facial recognition attempts. The piece explores the indistinct line and role reversal between product and consumer, and the absurdism of a world permeated by technology. Kane’s Television Conspiracy transform the entire display area into an artwork, as it reacts to the way in which audiences inhabit the gallery space.

Angus Shaw’s monochrome oil paintings delves into traditional realism. The small-scale of the works and the variations of gray shades set a quiet and intimate, sophisticated engagement. Inspired by family photographs of children, Shaw’s artwork is personal and introspective, exploring memory and togetherness. The likeness of the subjects is veiled and facial features are faded. Most strikingly, in an alternative aesthetics that reflect upon the absurdism of performative seeing, the eyes are missing. A moody whiteness replaces them, both soothing and frustrating the gaze of the viewer.

Words by Crisia Constantine