Michael Taylor. Vegas. 2009. Folded & agitated photocopy. 297 x 420mm.
...The old but battle-scarred hedonism in aesthetics has [...] zeroed in on what it claims to be a perverse implication of the ideal of blackness, namely the notion that the dark aspects of art ought to yield something approximating pleasure [...] Actually, the ideal of darkness does no more and no less than postulate that art properly understood finds happiness in nothing except its ability to stand its ground. This happiness illuminates the sensuous phenomenon from inside.. Just as in internally consistent works of art, spirit penetrates even the most impermeable phenomena, redeeming them sensuously, as it were, so blackness too - the antithesis of the fraudulent sensuality of culture's facade - has a sensual appeal.. There is more pleasure in dissonance than in consonance - a thought that metes out justice to hedonism, measure for measure.
-Theodor W. Adorno¹
What interests me is not the core but the potentialities of this core to multiply and expand infinitely. The diffusion of the core, its suppleness and elasticity, rebound, ramifications. Spanning, encompassing, space-devouring, star-trodden journeys, everything around and between the core.
-Anaïs Nin²
blank invited seven artists to engage in an experiment of voluntary asceticism, to produce an intimate work in which, formally, colour is reduced to black. The gallery will be painted entirely black for this exhibition. Zander Blom, Liza Grobler, Nomthunzi Mashalaba, Kathryn Smith, Michael Taylor, Hentie van der Merwe and Mary Wafer are participating.
http://www.blankprojects.com/current.php
