Leap into the void is an exhibition exploring the topic of dematerialization, intended as the possibility to experiment with an unmystical form of detachment from the concrete world. As this is not a state of physical reality, but rather a tendency – a tension towards the intangible – the exhibition’s path inevitably links scientific reflections on the concept of “void” with the philosophical issue of what is “real”, approached through several studies on digitalization.
The recent digital breakthrough turned the experience of dematerialization into an average and daily condition of our existence. Consequently, it was bound to transform into a creative dimension. An existential tension with which philosophers, authors, and artists continue to engage.
Korean philosopher Byung-Chul Han speaks about an “emptied” world in one of his latest essays, Non- things. How we stopped living the real (2002). From his perspective, informatization produces “non- things”, slowly de-realizing the entire world. Byung-Chul Han opposes this dominion of information, which lacks vitality, with the “thingness” of art. Artworks are proper “things” thanks to their sensual and bodily dimensions that escape any sense-making or meaning, which are, by contrast, typical qualities of information.
On the other hand, Boris Groys, author of In the Flow (2016), emphasizes how the digital revolution leads art toward a “direct realism”. Interestingly, it is not dissimilar to what historical avant-garde authors sought, intending to challenge the traditional idea of artworks as contemplative objects. This new realism does not create things but rather practices destined not to survive. Such tension – or flow – becomes a concrete interpreter of the neverending stream of life and time.
As highlighted by the philosopher Luciano Floridi, the works of art of our digitized age, regardless of being practices or objects, always exist as nodes in a network. Emitters or transmitters of information, the nodes coexist with their “informational” counterpart, with their “digital shadow” that actively contributes to their value and existence.
The art of our time moves along this tension between matter and dematerialization, real and hyperreal, thing and non-thing. Although fascinated by the digital’s potential, it still holds doubts, interrogatives, and perplexities regarding the direction taken by humankind.
The exhibition’s title is the same as Yves Klein’s renowned performance. In 1960, he took a series of photographs of himself as he leaped, arms wide open, from the ledge of a villa in Fontenay-aux-Roses, a few kilometers south of Paris. Two years before, Klein created one of his most radical projects: an exhibition at Iris Clert Gallery titled “Le Vide” (The Void), where visitors were immersed in a completely white space from which all the objects had been removed.
The exhibition itinerary presents the works of several great protagonists of the history of art in the XX century, pioneers of digital art, and authors from the most recent generations. Specifically, Leap into the void focuses on artists who, at various times, explored the facets of the vacuum. Some negated its substance, and others identified it as a merely ideal dimension. Again, some works reflected the epochal changes in our perception of material aspects, caused by the development of software and informatization paradigms, the digital revolution, and its codification.
The exhibition – the last installment of a trilogy dedicated to Matter – comprises three thematic sections (Void, Flow, and Simulation) defining three modalities of focus, representation, and expression of the dematerialization principles.