An exhibition about art and illness, that presciently was opened just as the Covid nightmare took hold of the world. In life, illness is a big topic, in art it is tricky terrain. Nevertheless, artists repeatedly dare to tackle this existentially complex paradigm. This exhibition brings together ten positions that tell of the encounter with illness in very different media - by means of photography, drawing, painting, video, sculpture and installation.
In her essay On Being Ill, Virginia Woolf wrote that illness and pain are the opposite of language. The immediacy of the disease eludes language and is difficult to convey. Visual artists also have to struggle with similar difficulties. Even if art accommodates the variety of media that can be used today, it is always confronted with limits and questions. How close, how concrete can art come to illness? Can artistic statements aim at our emotions, appeal to our sympathy? And to what extent is it possible to link concrete experiences with a superordinate, universally valid and thus, to a certain extent, artistic level? Ten artists - each with their own medical history in mind - suggest different ways of dealing with the topic in these uncertain Covid times.
The exhibition owes its title to Sinclair's T-shirt Painting work, touch Me I'm Sick. The sentence sounds like a cry for help, but not only generates pity, but frightens you in the same measure. Don't touch the sick. we could infect us. Illness is uncomfortable, annoying when it's not otherwise, one avoids it.
At the center of Ross Sinclair's installation is a song. It is
the story of a self-healing. Ross Sinclair starred as a
wild punk at a young age, he also drunk many nights.
At some point he realized that things couldn't go on like this anymore. The father of three children thought about a program
of Alcoholics Anonymous. But people kept talking there
From God. As a convinced atheist, he found this very difficult. the
Solution came with the idea of replacing GOD with GUITARS. with
he now bought himself with the money he used to spend on beer
guitar to guitar. The wall high drawing is like the small ones,
designed song lists scribbled on food slips, the bands on their
use at concerts. But the cheat sheet is also one
Memo list for all the things that are worth living for, his daughter Grace, the island of Orkney, where his father resides, etc.