The exhibition, called Col Tempo / With Time, after the inscription held in the hand of the subject of Giorgene's famous portrait of an old woman, La Vecchia, explores "the blindness of sight" with a vast collection of faces from an archive of photographs and films established by the Austrian anthropologist Josef Wastl between 1939 and 1943, material used for Nazi "anthropological" research.
The exhibition "does not seek to offer a historical treatment of the material, but demonstrates, through a labyrinthine structure, the many ways in which we can look at a fellow human being. How does the modern viewer look at, consider, misunderstand or comprehend the same pictures in the different contexts provided by art history, history, contemporary art, biography or psychology? Charged with a dramatic power, the work will confront whoever is willing to read the eyes of these persons with moral issues, the lack of historical recollection and the disturbing experience of prejudiced responses in action," the Ernst Museum says.
Rényi says in the exhibition catalogue that the exhibition, "while it treats, and in part documents, historical material, is not a historical show; rather, it highlights the social-anthropological dimensions of the power of sight that reveal themselves in full complexity in the common context of everyday life."
"Col Tempo explores the blindness of sight....The anthropological fact that everyone has a face creates some sort of a universal reciprocity among people: we see others through it and offer our own face to be seen. To this extent, the face is the place for exchanging glances: a common ground. However, for the very same reasons it is a battlefield that is subjected to human hierarchies, the constraints and dynamics of social and power relations."
Photo: daylife.com
