In 2021, SPRING/BREAK Art Show NYC will return to 625 Madison Avenue between 58th and 59th Streets for the second time, specifically to unveil the exhibition HEARSAY:HERESY.
Responding to the notion of HEARSAY:HERESY, one needs to look to Shakespeare’s Hamlet—a play seeping with innuendo, suspicion and mistrust—and understand that there are many layers to the ever-present possibility of darkness in the individual. Hamlet tells Horatio, “There are more things in Heaven and earth.../Than are dreamt of in your philosophy” (I.V.166-67), bringing focus to the sinister battle between logic and emotion while dwelling within the Great Chain of Being, which places man on a hierarchy not too distant to God.
Society has been guided, willingly or otherwise, by leaders and extremists that have turned our nightmares into playgrounds of misinformation and superstition, and entwined survival and politics. This is sadly reminiscent of events in the Dark and Middle Ages, where then, at least, one can argue that they did not have the knowledge, nor the scientific understanding, that we have in this new and current century. Whether it can be contextualized as a mirror or a foreshadowing of the present moment, riots were rampant, attacks on government buildings and attempted coups the norm, and even grander class disparities; uniting these separate historical experiences is the collective inaction of the everyday person.
The Contemporary Art Modern Project’s The Wizard’s Room looks to a coalescing of superstition and ignorance as dangerous through the creation of a space where the Wizard— the Maker of Magic, the Alchemist, the Seer—draws us into His realm with revelations as to how we can survive, how we can prosper, whom we must and mustn’t trust, and insight on how to, at last, beat the system. Each of the artists in our booth touch on the character of society through their works, subliminally or directly indicting the darkness in society they perceive, one under duress.
There really is more to this world, our societies, than either Horatio or Hamlet could ever imagine. The most disturbing of factors is not that the element of excess, but the heightened sense of individualism: as long as things don’t affect me personally, I don’t need to act. The Wizard’s Room, collectively, cautions us against apathy and inaction, with the room serving a microcosm of what we all inhabit—knowingly or not.
For tickets, please visit https://www.eventbrite.com/o/springbreak-art-show-12813445625
