The scientist, the philosopher and the artist certainly have one thing in common. They are all researchers. While they work with different means, tools and methods, all three play a fundamental role in discovering the world that surrounds us. I am convinced that they represent three aspects that make us human: reasoning ability, research drive and creativity.
The essence of our being human is that we have the ability to think abstractly. It ensures that we can understand things that take place far beyond our immediate environment. This allows us to reason about the microscopic and the astronomically large, while we are creatures less than two meters in size. We make analyzes of the past and predictions about the future with time jumps that exceed our lifespan hundreds of times and yet our insights about this prove to be useful and useful in our daily lives. But doesn't our abstract mind also bring with it a great paradox?
The core idea behind the exhibition “Truth/Reality.” Is perhaps best captured in a quote from Oscar Wilde: "A truth ceases to exist if more than one person believes it."
The quote is so appropriate because it confronts us with the inevitable contradictions that arise when you try to define the concept of truth for yourself. After all, in order to understand our world, we want to see structures in what surrounds us: we sort information and abstract our direct perception. But actually abstraction and reality are each other's contradictions that are intertwined in human thinking.
I have chosen the theme of truth/reality because it brings us back to the most essential question man has been asking for centuries: "What is existence?" It is of course the source question of philosophy, but both consciously and unconsciously it is also one of the most important motives of the artist as a researcher. At the same time, the theme is extremely topical. Just like the information revolutions brought about by printing, radio technology and television, today the digital revolution is creating new terms such as fake news, alternative facts and the myth trap. This change, which can be felt worldwide, forces us all to think about a question that used to be mainly voluntarily asked by philosophers: what is truth and what is reality?
By bringing 8 of my artists together around this theme, I want to confront the visitor with the many paradoxes that our human thinking entails. But above all I want to show how by just asking a question, a new world can open up with many surprises.
