How to See in the Dark: Exhibition Opening

Co-Prosperity Gallery is pleased to present How to See in the Dark, a group exhibition organized by CCAM, the Center for Concrete and Abstract Machines, opening on May 2nd. Artists Eva Davidova (NYC), Dakota Gearhart (NYC), Garrett Laroy Johnson (Chicago), and Alberto Ortega-Trejo (Chicago) respond to the unspoken headline of our contemporary moment: the d*rk enlightenment espoused by reactionary technopriests is upon us. How to understand this moment as artists, organizers, educators, workers, dreamers? A line from cyberneticist Heinz von Foerster often quoted by Chicago activist-artist stalwart Brian Holmes gives the show its wings: “If you want to see, learn how to act.” Of course, the quippy “how to” off ers no silver bullets, but How to See in the Dark does intend to mobilize the American can-do spirit. Emphasis on spirit. The viewer is asked to “stay with the weirder”, to confront ways of thinking and acting we might have dismissed, a call to break open old convictions, and a challenge to step beyond closed systems of thinking, seeing, and acting. It is a meditation on the paradox of our times, an abandonment of purity politics. The exhibition wrestles with the cycles of history and nature, from witch hunts and genocides to tectonic shifts and cosmic phenomena. In doing so, the show challenges the viewer to reckon with the current moment on more-than-human time-scales, to accept that as a best case scenario, we fi nd ourselves experiencing the solstice of a thousand years of darkness. Through this exhibition, the artist advocates for an intergenerational project rooted in revolutionary optimism, a collective shift towards a cyber-ecological spirituality (eco-techno-theo practices) that confronts darkness head-on without the promise of salvation.

This project was supported, in part, by a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant.