Opening: Wednesday\, January 16\, 5 to 7pm . Exhibition runs January 16 to February 2\, 2013
When the rational m eaning and natural order of things rub up against our sense of understandin g\, laughter’s innocent self-ignorance is perhaps a naïve\, unconscious acq uiescence responding to the shortcomings of knowledge. It is a laughter of despair at the mind’s failure to offer a satisfactory explanation of the wo rld. Humour usually takes a subversive stance towards all given knowledge. Jokes are always a fantasy. Yet\, they carry a cognitive reckoning that of ten yields more profound facts. That fleeting moment when the laughter of f orgetting your self grasps the underlying cognitive truth\, that moment of pure delight\, is one of awareness of a revealed error. It secures us with a sense of superior knowledge\, the superiority we feel over instinct\, and yet belies the inferiority we have in understanding it. In this lies the i diot of nature – the human spirit is at once superior to material life\, an d yet the mind remains inferior to the pure realm of absolute truth. As an outlet for repressed\, or socially-unacceptable norms\, it is but a whisper to the larger\, possibly even more exploitative\, agenda of the virtues an d vices of humour. Suspending judgment is the morality that compensates for the suspicious or doubtful. The artists do not create laughter\, but rathe r\, humour – in a dance between subjectivities. They bring us closer to rea lity by what is revealed through imagined ideals faced pragmatically\, the ‘serious’ approached ‘playfully.’
Featuring works by:
Ma
tilda Aslizadeh\, Scott Billings\, Karilynn Ming Ho\, Sophia Isajiw\, Sasha
Krieger\, Nick Lakowski\, Evan Lee\, Athena Papadopoulos\, Holly Parmley\,
Roula Partheniou\, and Nick Smolinski
Cura ted by Christine D’Onofrio
Hours: Wednesday-Saturd ay 12-4pm
[gallery link="file" ids="24039\,24040\,24041\,2403 8\,24037\,24033\,24032\,24035\,24034\,24029\,24036\,24031\,24030\,24028"] LOCATION:AHVA Library Gallery\, Room 112\, Koerner Library GEO:49.266692;-123.254348 URL;VALUE=URI:https://ahva.ubc.ca/events/event/the-idiot-of-nature/ ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://ahva.cms.arts.ubc.ca/wp-content/uploads/sites/37/2021/05/1164.jpg END:VEVENT BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:America/Vancouver BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:-0700 TZOFFSETTO:-0800 DTSTART:20121104T090000 TZNAME:PST END:STANDARD END:VTIMEZONE END:VCALENDAR