23 Jun 2014

Mark Themann at EMPTY CUBE

Mark Themannn (Australia, Melbourne) is the featured artist in the 33rd edition of EMPTY CUBE, which will be held in the premises of Appleton Square, a gallery in Lisbon, Portugal, on June 25th, 2014. 'Zone' is a project that, in keeping with the orientation of his work, will explore a performative dimension, questioning viewers about the historic contextualisation of the 'white cube' as the temporal and spatial device that is more generally known to us as an exhibition gallery; a subject that has proved quite fruitful in terms of the debate concerning the display of artworks, and has been widely commented on by artists and theorists during the 20th century, particularly in the 1960s, when the art gallery itself was envisaged as the object of the artistic process. That theoretical outlook, which is present in Mark Themann's work, takes on new semantic and conceptual qualities by becoming a part of the EMPTY CUBE project.

Viewers will find themselves confronted, with great subtlety and via an austere economy of means, with their own awareness of the present moment as they experience the exhibitive space inside the cube, which for a single night will occupy, like an intruder, the gallery that holds it. The action, which, Themann carries out in this project, focuses on language as a means that allows us to explore, in space, issues that originate in our most intimate thoughts. However, the device inside the cube possesses the potential, by means of its three-dimensional visuality, of broadening the various fields of production of meaning which this unrepeatable moment may open.

Considering the assumptions, in regards of the rules in this apparent game, as well as the fact that the cube's space is expected to be the location where the succession of events will take place, their duration and near-imperceptible transformation disclose a temporal metrics that has been predefined between the artist and another player, in accordance with a random principle that plays a decisive role in our process of approaching this work.

The project will be photographically documented, and some of the photos will be displayed on the project's site – www.emptycube.org