Dancing Darkness | Patton Foundation Gallery

Dancing Darkness
Curated by Elliott Paul Grant
Patton Foundation Gallery / Saarbruecken, Germany
Opening: December 7th, 2012, 7pm
Exhibition: Dec 8 – 21, 2012 and Jan 7 – 18, 2013

Participating artists:
Tamas Dobos, André Mailänder, Rachel Mrosek, Lilian Riewer, Julia Schiller, Oliver Schneider, Volker Schütz, Véronique Verdet

Confluence and the Patton Foundation are pleased to present Dancing Darkness. The exhibition was inspired by the Japanese dance form Butoh, and unites the work of eight artists and photographers. In Butoh, with roots in Noh drama and Zen Buddhism, the dancers express the interplay between emptiness and form, and between the light and darkness.

Similarly, the dance of light and darkness and the dance between emptiness and form can be seen in each of the artist’s work represented in this exhibition. Organized in the autumn of 2012, the photographs appearing were chosen by the artists and the curator Paul Elliot Grant via an intuitive ongoing conversation. Together the photographs are elemental, primary, spare, quiet and atmospheric. There is no attempt to specifically document a particular place or time, rather the viewer is asked to allow their own imagination to emerge and reflect upon the dance of light and darkness.

„The photographs of Julia Schiller open windows into a deeply reflective world of shadows and unclear boundaries. A woman and her reflection are meeting in an unknown darkened urban setting. The darkness erodes the boundary between the woman and her reflection and makes the reflection as real, as tangible as the woman herself. In another a dog walks alone on a street in almost no light, the uniform grays of the photograph are echoed in another in which the fog contains ghostly figures. An autumn tree, with aged leaves emerges dramatically from almost the total blackness of the forest. In the center of all, seen through the window’s curtain a deep orange sun whose light is found again in the flowers on a table.“
— Paul Elliot Grant (Curator)

A huge thanks to Markus Schneider & Stefan Maurer from THE ROBOT SCIENTISTS for creating a fabulous musical atmosphere during the opening reception!
„Cosmic & Magico Disco, Italo Body Music & Transcendance House. TRS are Markus Schneider and Stefan Maurer, also curators of the @somethingspaecial DJ mix series & two of three behind @emerald-and-doreen-rec. Selected gigs played in Berlin, Barcelona, Paris, Beirut, Tuscany, Zurich, Rennes a.m.m.“

Many thanks as well to SR – Saarländischer Runkfunk for their extensive TV report about the exhibition, and to the Saarbrücker Zeitung for their exhibition review!

Wie Licht aus der Dunkelheit dringt, aus künstlichen und natürlichen Lichtquellen bei Oliver Schneider und als Reflex und Restlicht bei Julia Schiller, erweist sich als gelungene Verbindung zweier Positionen.
— Saarbrücker Zeitung, No. 303, sg

I also designed the website & press release for the exhibition.