How does art come to the truth, how does the truth come to art? A statement is true when it finds its counterpart in reality. Art’s great potential lies in eluding this verifiability. It designs alternative worlds to reality, models for utopias, it redraws reality, rethinks ongoing processes and leads them to a possible end. Art seizes upon structures of reality and transfers them into visual processes in order to call them into question.
Around half a century ago, Hannah Arendt posed the question of whether such a thing as ‚truth‘ exists at all. She came to the conclusion that truth exists exclusively in the plural, that we therefore are dealing with a multiplicity of truths. The subjectivity of each perspective, the parameters of one’s own reality, the sum of personal experiences and, last but not least, various social norms have an elementary effect on the perception and the evaluation of truth. Contemporary art production is shaped by diverse strategies for reflecting on reality and creating alternative images of it. What is interesting to observe, is that the subjectivity of their own perspective is a factor that many artists themselves reflect upon critically. One’s own person, one’s own identity, one’s own experiential world form the point of origin and cannot, in fact should not, be negated. Their subjectivity is not a weakness, but rather a great strength. Art’s ability to subjectively penetrate reality, and to explore and to question it, represents its major potential for insight.
The exhibition DIE GANZE WAHRHEIT (The Whole Truth) features six contemporary positions that are highly diverse in both their artistic approaches and their use of media. Yet they share a preoccupation with and a reflection on very specific aspects of our realities.
