THE POSSESSED | Curated by John Stark

Featuring: Yason Banal, Luke Brennan, Hugh Mendes, Seamus Moran, Manuel Ocampo, Toby de Silva, John Stark, Roman Vasseur, Muir Vidler

Exhibition Dates
Friday May 6th – Saturday May 28th 2011

Gallery Hours
Wednesday – Saturday 11am – 6pm or by appointment

Address
CHARLIE SMITH london, 2nd Floor, 336 Old St, London, EC1V 9DR

"Starting from unlimited freedom, I arrived at unlimited despotism"
Shigalyov in Dostoyevsky’s "The Devils"

The resistance unites amidst a fiery reality ripe with revolution; saviors and avengers possessed by the justified hope of liberty, agents of change unwittingly play host to the infernal and flag bearers carry the burden of past catastrophes into the flames of rebellion once again. Hunting for new prospects beyond the vanishing point, their thousand yard stares reach into the sky coalescing with the last rays of light from the horizon. Advancing along the narrow path of progress through a complex network of delusion and guilt, the miserable footsteps of war carry the mad passengers further into the newly administered world; a harvest of sorrow with foul heaps that tell of devotion and violence, until they reach what remains of the city’s gates. They rest a while in the shadows of the deranged architecture, huddled on the altar steps in the burnt out cathedral, at last liberated from tyranny yet tyrannical through their liberation. Their collective gaze takes form; a vaporous slipstream projecting from the depths of their haunted furrows, fragmenting through shards of stained glass creating a glorious spectrum over the clouded ruins of the city. John Stark