From Seeing to Acting
Radical Reversibility
16 September – 3 October 2021

Looiersgracht 60 is pleased to present ‘From Seeing to Acting,’ a group exhibition and symposium organized in collaboration with Radical Reversibility (RR), a research-based art cooperative that seeks to develop visual and conceptual strategies that radically reverse the paradigms of contemporary visual culture. A sequel to the exhibition ‘Seeing Without a Seer’ at Looiersgracht 60 in 2018, this show brings together a number of renowned artists, curators, and scholars to explore the interplay of seeing and acting in the context of a hypermedial world.

The ongoing ecological, social, and technological crises are forcing us to re-think and re-imagine our ways of life. In a society committed to limitless growth contingent on the exploitation of nature, the stories we choose to tell and the images we select to circulate are chosen to perpetuate the myth of progress, which is sold as an inevitability. In this context RR seeks to explore how the visual arts can help us envisage alternatives to outdated ways of seeing. The show is based on questions about the reciprocity of seeing and acting: how are the seer, the seen, and the act of seeing entangled?

To approach this question RR proposes the idea of acting-intuition. Developed in the 1920’s by the Japanese philosopher Kitaro Nishida, this concept refers to the ways in which self and world inter-act and inter-intuit with each other. Acting and seeing are understood as simultaneous and reversible: “we act through seeing, and we see through acting”. Nishida described acting-intuition as lending one’s body to the world and making it possible for the world to become one’s body. This phenomenon is exemplified by artists: the same creative gesture both makes the world and is made by the world.

We tend to see what we want and expect to see, but with this show RR proposes a paradigm shift in the ways we perceive and process visual information. The works in the exhibition play with underlying structural concepts rather than superficial appearances. The installations, videos, photographs, and sculptures on display engage our moving bodies, challenge our points of view, and encourage us to see beyond the surface of objects.

'From Seeing to Acting' is a creative exploration of Nishida’s conceptual entanglement of vision and bodily action. RR’s fertile proposal allows us to experience the ways in which our senses interact with our environment and reveals how we can imagine new modes of being through the visual arts.

Artists
Hiryczuk/Van Oevelen (NL), Spiros Hadjidjanos (DE), Gwenneth Boelens (NL), Yoichi Kamimura (JP), Sema Bekirovic (NL), Mustapha Azeroual (FR/MA), Martine Stig (NL) & Ilse van Rijn (NL), Terike Haapoja (FI), Nicolas Sassoon & Rick Silva (FR/CA/USA), Peter Bogers (NL), Frank Bloem (NL), George Shiras III (re-interpreted by RR), Murat Yıldız (TR).

Opening Night
Wednesday 15 September 2021, 17:00 - 20:00
To reserve a spot please register via this LINK.

NB. The health and safety of our attendees and staff always comes first. We try to make your visit to Looiersgracht 60 as safe and enjoyable as possible. It is currently not compulsory for visitors to wear a face mask in galleries. However, we highly recommend wearing one during your visit. You are kindly requested to take into account the preferences of other visitors and keep a 1.5 meter distance.