Edge of Silence

Edge of Silence is a group show featuring artwork by some of Goodman Gallery’s leading contemporary artists.

The title is taken from a light box with transparency created by Alfredo Jaar that illuminates the words ‘OTHER PEOPLE THINK’, a quote from the youthful writings of John Cage in which Cage “affirms silence as an opportunity to learn what other people think.” Jaar’s light box follows this practice with a kind of silence opens up a space for listening by disrupting our thoughts and perceptions, inviting us to step outside ourselves.

Sleeping, a recurring motif in Kentridge’s work, is used as a metaphor for a state of self-imposed blissful ignorance in which the outside world may be forgotten as the sleeper closes herself off into her internal world. This notion, coupled with the fragility and transparency of glass, evokes a dangerous situation leading to a painful, if not actually destructive, moment of awakening and recognition in Kentridge’s series of prints Sleeping on Glass.

Liza Lou’s Untitled bead canvases emphasize repetition, formal perfection, and materiality, but thrives on the tension between silent beauty and the presence of traces of bodily residue in the beaded strips that establishes many of the social themes, such as uncelebrated women’s work, that underpin her work.

Works on exhibition reference cultural moments and artistic practice that is at times interrogative, celebratory, or a means of bearing witness. Yet in all instances they complicate and remediate so as to bring about a new framework for understanding or experiencing that which exists already.