Crime & Punishment

Oreet Ashery, Barney Ashton, Giampiero Assumma, Nemanja Cvijanovic, Martin Effert, Sagi Groner, Maurizio Giuseppucci, Daniel Holfeld, Cedric Lefebvre, Dana Levy, Terence McCormack, Vesna Milicevic, Jean-Gabriel Periot, Petra Reimann and Judith Witteman.
1 June 2008

“One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed, but by the punishments that the good have inflicted; and a community is infinitely more brutalized by the habitual employment of punishment than it is by the occasional occurrence of crime.”

Oscar Wilde

If we could draw a scale where ‘crime’ was based on one edge and punishment – on the other margin of this scale; we might easily translate it into black and white colors. But would we, then, try to look for a ‘grey zone’ in between? Could we do rethinking about varied crimes and their punishments and wonder about the relations between these acts? Do crimes fit their punishments?

In this act would we perceive differently individuals who commit crimes, who are punished and had been locked in prison or a medical hospital for the rest of their lives?

Could we observe crime as an absolute evil thing and punishment as the ultimate human way to deal with it? Jean-Gabriel Periot shows how women’s acts can be interpreted as a terrible crime on one hand and on the other hand – how can punishers become criminals themselves.

“Crime and Punishment” show spots on time and places in which crime or evil might happened there. Disturbance, fears, inconvenient and threat are some of the dominant experiences in this exhibition. As well as a strong urge to fill in the ‘missing details’ or to figure out what is the story of this unpleasant envirement in Assumma’s ‘tourist book’ or in Giuseppucci’s impressions from Giudiziario Psychiatric Hospital. As far as it concerns, this place confronts the viewer with a complicated and difficult routine life of individuals for whom this place has become the only home they’ll ever know.

By returning our gaze into the ‘grey zone’, we’ll be immediately exposed to the exhibition routes and face the most important questions: What is considered a crime? What is the ‘right’ punishment for it? Could a certain punishment becomes a crime? Wouldn’t it be the right thing to re definite ‘crime’ and ‘punishment’?

A group exhibition with international artists featuring: Oreet Ashery, Barney Ashton, Giampiero Assumma, Nemanja Cvijanovic, Martin Effert, Sagi Groner, Maurizio Giuseppucci, Daniel Holfeld, Cedric Lefebvre, Dana Levy, Terence McCormack, Vesna Milicevic, Jean-Gabriel Periot, Petra Reimann and Judith Witteman.

“Unfortunately this exhibition was cancelled”