Esther Stocker: Ritorno alla Razionalità

10 AM. ART Gallery presents a solo exhibition of Esther Stocker: “Ritorno alla Razionalità“. The socio-economic roots of the irrationality that runs through society today is not simply a distortion created by the coronavirus pandemic; they run far deeper and farther back in time. The irrational has historically and cyclically infiltrated the social fabric, prompting an unreasonable willingness to believe in pre-modern superstitions, anti-scientific prejudice, baseless theories and conspiracies.

This is the backdrop to Esther Stocker’s exhibition, where once again the artist demonstrates her attraction to formal paradoxes, “errors” and playing with optical balance. Although in the past her research often sought to defend or emphasize the concepts of anarchy, irrationality or freedom from fixed or overly rigid systems, current events have prompted her to question the need to return to some form of rationality. As an expression of this, the exhibition is laid out as an environmental installation on the main floor and a series of paintings and sculptures on the lower floor, in which a succession of elements create disturbance and interference, challenging and questioning the limits of order, perceptual consistency, and each individual’s responsibility within the community.

An ensemble of eternally repeated modules creates an apparently ordered visual cadence, to which the artist adds anomalies and exceptions that capture our attention, setting off a rhythm that reminds us the subjective perception of a larger system may only be defined through reciprocity and a shared consensus regarding intent, vision and objectives.