Out of a sentence can develop a gestation process for an art work or a
whole show. This happened to me a few years ago when I read the words ‘man is
air in the air and in order to become a point in the air he has to fall’. My
exhibition ‘The Art Of Failure Isn’t Hard To Master’ at Highlanes Municipal
Gallery came out of this single sentence. I would anchor every thought
around it and keep coming back to it.
On the bus on the way to a meeting with Highlanes director Aoife Ruane a song by Michael Jackson was playing and he sang 'I'm looking at the man in the mirror, I'm asking him to make a change, if you wanna make the world a better place take a look at yourself and make a change'... and that's what I was trying to do for the show, I looked at my own shortcomings, weaknesses and failures first and made them visible.
Bernard Levin wrote in an article called ‘Life’s great riddle and no time to find its meaning’: ‘to put it bluntly, have I time to discover why I was born before I die…? I have not managed to answer the question yet and however many years I have before me they are certainly not as many as there are behind. There is an obvious danger in leaving it too late… why do I have to know why I was born? Because, of course, I am unable to believe that it was an accident; and if it wasn’t one, it must have a meaning’.
In other words what he was saying was, being alive is not an economical experience. We live such hectic lives at times, but I see this great hunger in all of us for silence, reflection and mystery… and perhaps that’s where someone like me and this exhibition comes in, to provide the viewer with mystery and I hope you will find some here in these images.
All images taken by Eugene Langan except for images of collaborators/interventionists inside the shack, children drawing outside the shack and image during opening speech.
On the bus on the way to a meeting with Highlanes director Aoife Ruane a song by Michael Jackson was playing and he sang 'I'm looking at the man in the mirror, I'm asking him to make a change, if you wanna make the world a better place take a look at yourself and make a change'... and that's what I was trying to do for the show, I looked at my own shortcomings, weaknesses and failures first and made them visible.
Bernard Levin wrote in an article called ‘Life’s great riddle and no time to find its meaning’: ‘to put it bluntly, have I time to discover why I was born before I die…? I have not managed to answer the question yet and however many years I have before me they are certainly not as many as there are behind. There is an obvious danger in leaving it too late… why do I have to know why I was born? Because, of course, I am unable to believe that it was an accident; and if it wasn’t one, it must have a meaning’.
In other words what he was saying was, being alive is not an economical experience. We live such hectic lives at times, but I see this great hunger in all of us for silence, reflection and mystery… and perhaps that’s where someone like me and this exhibition comes in, to provide the viewer with mystery and I hope you will find some here in these images.
All images taken by Eugene Langan except for images of collaborators/interventionists inside the shack, children drawing outside the shack and image during opening speech.
