Hyper/Reality

Hyper/Reality is a Fall 2021 exhibition presented at Amos Eno Gallery that feature works in dialogue with reality and its discontents. The exhibit is curated by gallery director Audra Lambert. Hyper/Reality, on view from Oct 7th through October 24th, features artworks by Ligia Bouton, Grant Johnson and Aaron Wilder.The show presents an analysis of how reality/ies can be skewed and re-interpreted utilizing new media, photography, mixed media, painting, collage, sculpture, and installation.

Baudrillard’s 20th century art criticism introduced the concept of the hyperreal, which marks the rising importance of the Simulacrum over reality. Hyper/Reality confronts the many ways in which the hyperreal has overtaken reality in the present day, delving into digital and wireless technologies that have pervaded our view of what is, and is not, ‘real.’ Works on view in Hyper/Reality present altered visions of the ‘real,’ as defined by the overlap of digital, natural and social phenomenon that permeate our everyday lives. Sculpture by Ligia Bouton embraces industrial materials while examining legends of the American “Old West,” providing humorous evidence for how these myths are actually appropriated narratives.  Works by Grant Johnson layer imagery of our surroundings while framing questions about how we experience and analyze these environments, probing what information may be omitted from our conclusions. New media, photography and installation work by Aaron Wilder asks us to reconsider narratives as political sites, asking how realities shift when they become co-opted, censored or re-interpreted in ways that may escape our notice.

In a world demanding that we accept often-conflicting realities and assimilate them into a universal worldview, Hyper/Reality shifts our focus away from the idea of truth, instead speculating on what it is that we take for granted, and exposing how it can be impermanent, faltering, and unreal.