MONTREAL: galerie antoine ertaskiran: “Festina lente”

Eva Kot’átková, "Untitled (Floor Lesson)," 2014. Courtesy of the artist and galerie antoine ertaskiran.

galerie antoine ertaskiran is pleased to announce Festina lente, a summer group exhibition curated by Ji-Yoon Han, bringing together works by Numa Amun, Marielle Blanc, Anthony Burnham, Angela de la Cruz, Lizzie Fitch/Ryan Trecartin, Eva Kot’átková, and Derek Sullivan.

The exhibition displays a fictional collection whose owner is none other than Gradiva, a character invented a hundred years ago by the German writer Wilhelm Jensen in his novella Gradiva, A Pompeiian Fantasy. Gradiva has become a mythic figure as a result of multiple interpretations and adaptations, most notably due to psychoanalysis and Surrealism. Staunchly anachronistic, this is a fantastical being who walks through the centuries and through the walls between dream and reality, with “lente festinans” poise. In her wake, one is invited to let one’s way of looking at contemporary art drift in an imaginative way.

Festina lente. Make haste slowly. This classical adage is taken as a beacon to investigate how we look at art and how art triggers our desires, thus moving us, putting us into motion, and warping our gaze. In the flow of images that we uninterruptedly take in, what makes us attracted to a particular work and how does it become unique to our eyes? How can one create this dynamic of selection and preference in an exhibition space, this swaying between contemplation and urge, between rapture and voraciousness? How can we share a space of desire that activates a conversation between the works and engages our gaze, all at once capturing it and untying it?

This exhibition is the result of a new curatorial competition open to Ph.D. candidates in Art History, organized by galerie antoine ertaskiran and the Department of Art History and Cinematographic Studies at the Université de Montréal.

Image Credit: Eva Kot’átková, “Untitled (Floor Lesson),” 2014. Courtesy of the artist and galerie antoine ertaskiran.