Sorcha Dallas

Light & Sie is pleased to announce ‘Being and Nothingness’, a group exhibition curated by James Cope of the Goss-Michael Foundation featuring the work of Kate Atkin, Martin Boyce, Henry Coombes, Edward Kay, George Henry Longly, Toby Paterson and Clare Stephenson.

Being and Nothingness (a phenomenological essay on ontology) was written by the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre in 1943. In his essay, Sartre attempts to restructure and straighten out the question that had eluded Descartes, Kant and Heidegger: what is the relation of being to its nothingness and what distinguishes between consciousness and all other beings?

The artists in Being and Nothingness position themselves at an important place in this dialogue. They seek to justify the fundamental freedom of the human being by distilling elements of the familiar and anonymous, challenging our preconceptions and asking us to define our own identity. Their understanding of motivation for action and of what it means to be human is rooted in the very nature of consciousness - a desire for being. Each artist in Being and Nothingness exercises his or her freedom in such a way that this authentic option for human life represents a genuine aesthetic within today’s art dialogue.