The title of this exhibition, 'Potemkin village', refers to the fake settlements erected at the direction of Russian minister Grigory Potyomkin to fool Empress Catherine II during her prospective visit to Crimea (Ukraine) in 1787. The term has come to stand for any construction designed to stage reality for ideological or other ends.
As such, the term has an overtly negative connotation: it refers to things that are all facade and no content. A Potemkin village consists of hollow lies, meant to beautify and disguise an unsightly emptiness behind them. Evidently, the goal of deception is that we cannot perceive it as such. This means that, in order to be convincing, a Potemkin village must hide away the fact that it's a construction, that it was designed by human hands. It wants to present itself as a natural apparition, as something that is 'just there' and that you idly perceive without really seeing it. A Potemkin village gives us a certain view on things, but doesn't want us to know that it is only one of many possible views.
As a metaphor, 'Potemkin village' can be related to many forms of deceptive constructions in our daily lives. Staying close to the origins of the term, it can refer to the belief that consumer society is an accomplished fact, while in reality it results from a certain ideology that doesn't want to be perceived as such. At the same time, one can associate the term with the projective perceptions by which we stage the world around us, or even broader, with the categories that determine our perception in general. In this light, reality is always a human construction, a play of signs that makes it impossible to perceive the world as it truly is. The only thing we can do, is form some vague idea of the uncut Real behind the system.
Underlying this notion of reality, is a problematic opposition between false surface and truthful depth, between the demonic fake and the godly real. If reality is a human product, and all human products are to some extent constructs, we live in a world that could be described as a global Potemkin village, a permanent construction site you cannot leave alive. The question then becomes why one should stick to the uncut Real, if reality as we know it is always-already a human fiction. Can one 'reveal' truth, if the truth is something we put together? And why should one, out of a distrust of constructions, leave the composition of the world in the hands of those who believe their worldview can overlap the world?
The artists in this group exhibition examine reality as a composition, as something that is staged, whether it is by conscious design or by the human gaze. Their works do or do not relate directly to the larger reality outside, but can all be seen as compositions that expose themselves as composed.
Text by Koen Sels
