SLEEPER
BROWN GALLERY, LONDON
JULY 2 - JULY 23, 2009
Brown is pleased to announce the group exhibition “Sleeper”, a presentation of artists of the gallery FEINKOST, Berlin. “Sleeper” puts 9 international artists together under a rather sinister light. The theme looks at the notion of suddenly becoming something else as if awakening under a directive. In this case the exhibition concept scrutinizes the nature of curatorial practice, i.e., reinterpreting artistic practices and projects that carry their own specific meanings by suddenly placing them into altogether different roles or meanings.
According to biblical lore, the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus were seven Disciples of Christ who were locked away in a cave for a hundred years: an effort aimed at diminishing the influence of Christianity. When one day the cave was reopened, the sleepers awoke as if not more than a night had passed and they carried on with their pilgrimage. Today, thanks to Bush-era aftershocks, the definition of the sleeper has been overloaded with Hollywood tales like The Manchurian Candidate and The Bourne Identity as well as the media’s pervasive trawling for homegrown threats, terrorist cells, and secret agents. This exhibition plots out a scene of criminal intent connecting disparate artistic practices to create a theater of interpretation.
