Ian Kiaer
in ‘We stared at the Moon from the centre of the Sun’, Towner Art Gallery, Sussex
20 January – 8 April 2018
Ian Kiaer is included in ‘We stared at the Moon from the centre of the Sun’, an exhibition curated for Towner by artist Haroon Mirza with works from the Arts Council Collection, Towner’s Collection and interventions orchestrated by the artist and his studio, hrm199.
Often taking the role of composer, Mirza creates atmospheric environments through the linking together of art works often using light, sound, music and elements of architecture. For this new exhibition modern and contemporary painting, sculpture, installation, and film and video works are brought together to explore how our experience of the present is influenced by the juxtaposition between the archaic, or the obsolete, and an imagined future.
The title of the exhibition centers on the recurrence of solar and lunar symbolism in our attempts to understand the past and our images of the future. Such symbolism also relates to the shared realm we all inhabit – the earth – the social sphere, the cycles of natural phenomena, shapes and symbols as endless as the circle itself. In this exhibition Mirza tests the friction and relationship between existing artworks, to create dialogues between them that unfold along the recurrent lines of the circular shape. The exhibition is curated as a kind of spiralling, cyclical narrative to create a visual soundscape that triggers new narratives and relationships.