Current Exhibition
Immediacy of Image #2: THE UNMOVING
Still Images within Contemporary Culture
August 27th – September 26th, 2021
Idealoka Virtual Gallery
As a significant constituent of our culture, image is inherently neutral. It may operate both at the individual level as a medium to reveal our innermost and intimate personal expression, even further at the institutional level as an ideological instrument and persuasion. Interestingly, still images – say, in the form of a picture or a photograph – remain prevalent even though various formats are readily available. Technological progress provides us with access to moving, simulated, or even virtualized image production. Notwithstanding, still images remain distributed in prevalence. These might reveal a problem: how can something familiar and perhaps ordinary pose a reasonable urgency to be investigated and examined in scrutiny?
This exhibition, Immediacy of Image #2 aimed to explore those proposed inquiries by exposing various artistic strategies and approaches reflected by the artists. They respond to multiple issues in our surrounding through their each particular means, utilizing still images as their plane of representation. Through their works, we may learn that there is something more about ‘image’ than meets the eyes. It transcends beyond its presentation, its depiction, and what is perceived: unraveling complex interconnects and dynamism that materializes within the body of humanity. In the not too distant future, images – in their myriads forms and manifestations – might claim their artefactual roles to represents our previous physical and material reality to be increasingly folded, enveloped, and simulated in perpetuity.