Mnemonics [back to the future]

22 November 2024 - 08 February 2025

Works

About

On the occasion of GAEP’s 10th anniversary, the exhibition Mnemonics [back to the future] brings together new works by all the 14 artists that the gallery represents or collaborates with on a long-term basis.

The title draws from Răzvan Anton’s Mnemonics (2015), one of the first shows presented by GAEP. Reflecting the ongoing evolution of the gallery’s programme, Mnemonics [back to the future] zigzags across histories, geographies, mediums, and artistic methodologies. Time is its main subject. And timely is the adjective it aims for.

What if we sidestep the linearity of chronological time? What shifts does the idea that every moment in time contains the past and the future – “the present is the instant in which the future crumbles into the past,” in the words of poet Robert Browning – bring? And what does it mean to see ourselves as time containers, holding our pasts and futures in every one of our days? An anniversary seemed the right moment to think about these and to encourage contemplation by others.

Time is encoded in memory, and some of the works in the exhibition can be regarded as devices that aid individual or collective memory. Others explore idiosyncratic and unique paths. Eschewing any thematic alignment of the different artistic positions, Mnemonics [back to the future] creates space for an interchange of ideas and sentiments – of shared hopes and dreams, but also of universal human fears and doubts that bind us together.