Kunstverein, Leipzig, 2021:

The exhibition Baroque Topologies brings together international positions of contemporary art that, in their own complexity as well as in the moment of this contextualization, span a formal and thematic web that attempts to make the present tangible through the lens of the Baroque.

Accompanying the exhibition is a reader that sees itself as an experimental field of different modes of interpretation and as a reflection on the state of text production in the field of contemporary art.

Pursuing the baroque forms we follow a line that starts to vibrate. Stretched out into space, its momentum becomes the curvature of a surface, which grows into a vortex, bulging out further and further, folding in and out until it forms a complex body. In the Baroque, the mathematical theory of space is joined by the dimension of time. Under it, our line begins to lurch and create an imbalance. A break with symmetry occurs and bends the line into an ellipse. It begins to rotate and trace a spiral. If we imagine this spiral and reenact its incessant rotation in our thoughts, it creates a feeling of vertigo. Perception is thrown into a tailspin. Old familiar coordinates and orientation-giving borders dissolve. In the baroque topology, the difference between an objectively measurable external world and the subjective world of experience starts to blur. It is a fluid gesture that moves between and beyond categories formerly considered separate – body and mind, emotion and intellect, matter and information, you and I, I and O. This movement, this shape-shifting line, seems to contain valuable potential. It is this power to connect and dissolve old categories that presents itself as a baroque quality to us. With the exhibition we want to put particular attention to this as we try to make sense of the culture that surrounds us.

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