Art exists that one may recover the sensation of life; it exists to make one feel things, to make the stone stony…The technique of art is to make objects “unfamiliar,” to make forms difficult, to increase the difficulty and length of perception because the process of perception is an aesthetic end in itself and must be prolonged.

(Viktor Shklovsky, Art as Technique, 1917)

Valley of the Strange highlights six emerging Pan-European artists — José Alves, Cihad Caner, Federico Ciamei, Ela Polkowska, Rocco Venezia and Ana Zibelnik — who use photography to explore the boundaries of time and the disruption of the ordinary. The exhibition considers the role of the image in navigating past and present, while questioning how photography and film can defamiliarize our everyday encounters with the world. The works live in the hyperreal — zooming in and focusing on our innermost fears — blurring truth and fiction, and everything else in between.

The people, places and things of this exhibition are depicted as strangely familiar, illustrating Russian theorist Viktor Shklovsky’s concept of defamiliarization. Building on Freud’s writings about the uncanny, Shklovsky asserts that when the intimate is rendered in an atypical light our overall perception is enhanced. This concept serves as a lens to examine the works in the exhibition. Commonplace scenes and scenarios, when tilted slightly off kilter, lay bare our own inherent apprehensions, and with it, a deeper understanding of the expected. To underscore this, the installation emphasizes often overlooked physical elements of the gallery, such as the floor, in order to disrupt the habitual and conventional experience of looking at art.

Nostalgia, superstition, and the ephemeral coalesce to form an unsettling tension. Far from avoiding the uncomfortable, these artists relish it, embracing moments both typical and deeply alienating: an exposed eyeball, cracked glass, a haunting cry. It is specifically in these seconds of uncertainty and trepidation that our rich sensation of life is finally awakened.

Artists

ANA ZIBELNIK

CIHAD CANER

ELA POLKOWSKA

FEDERICO CIAMEI

JOSÉ ALVES

ROCCO VENEZIA

Curator

ERIC LAWTON