MARIA BARNAS – WE ARE TURNING CORNERS
2018-04-30Visual artist, poet and writer Maria Barnas focuses her work on the power of language in shaping reality. Her long-term research on whether words can be trusted as carriers of anything solid, converges in Sputter Fiction: presented first at the Nationaal Glasmuseum in Leerdam, the group of glass objects now on show in The Bakery further investigates the capacity of words to create new images. Does language consist of images? Can you pronounce a shape? Barnas builds narratives and alternative histories around history-as-we-know-it and what is presented as factual. An image, like a text, is not a closed container. It rarely depicts or describes what it sets out to. She works against the notion that language should have a specific form, aware of the fact that our grasp of reality is closely linked to the words we (don’t) choose to describe. Her work delves into the power structures that language exudes on a day-to-day, art-historical and political level. Moreover, her work sits at the heart of poetry’s ability to both heighten and obscure our notion of reality.
Opposite – Sputter Fiction, 2018
Exhibition runs through to June 16th, 2018
Annet Gelink Gallery
Laurierstraat 187-189
NL-1016PL Amsterdam
Netherlands
