Matias Faldbakken, Envy Measurement, 2016, VHS video tape and cassette, variable dimensions

Mirosław Bałka , Julian Charrière, Jimmie Durham, Lydia Ericsson Wärn, Matias Faldbakken, Paul Fägerskiöld, Charlotte Johannesson, Samson Kambalu, Mårten Lange, Margaret Loy Pula, Jakob Simonson
»End of History?«

Stockholm, May 19, 2022 - June 18, 2022

Curated by Erik Nordenhake

The Past, the Future, O dear, is from you; you should regard both these as one.
― Rumi

Galerie Nordenhake presents “End of History?”, a group exhibition that aims to explore alternative perceptions of time.

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The hegemonic Weltanschauung of many non-abrahmic peoples perceived time not as a straight line ― but as a circle, or a Möbius strip, or perhaps something entirely different. To St. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, this vantage point was reserved for God only, preferring the parallel of Him observing time as a block. During the 18th and 19th Century, the idea of time as a fourth dimension was expanded upon, culminating in Albert Einstein’s concept of spacetime in his 1905 special theory of relativity. Three years later, J.M.E. McTaggart famously proclaimed time to be an illusion. Lately, David Deutsch has reinvigorated the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, which postulates that quantum uncertainty can be explained by the universe branching into several differing time lines.
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Drawing upon Hegelian notions of human history as a linear progression, Francis Fukuyama argued in his 1989 essay The End of History?, and his subsequent book The End of History and the Last Man (1991), that humanity has reached "not just ... the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such: That is, the end-point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.”

Fukuyama has since grown increasingly critical of his own thesis.
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“People claim that we recapture for a moment the self that we were long ago when we enter some house or garden in which we used to live in our youth. But these are most hazardous pilgrimages, which end as often in disappointment as in success. It is in ourselves that we should rather seek to find those fixed places, contemporaneous with different years.”
― Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time

Matias Faldbakken, Envy Measurement, 2016, VHS video tape and cassette, variable dimensions

Jakob Simonson, Viewfinder (CMY), 2015, acrylic paint on aluminum, 103 x 206 cm each, 206 x 206 cm as full circle

Charlotte Johannesson, Stockholm City Hall, 1985, original plotter print, 31.5 x 23.5 cm

Jimmie Durham, A Stone moved from a Higher Place to a Lower; Time stood still, 1997, broken clock, 7 x 12.5 x 8 cm

Margaret Loy Pula, Anatye (Bush Potato), 2013, acrylic on linen, 120 x 120 cm

Samson Kambalu, Runner, 2014, digital video, colour, 50 seconds

Julian Charrière, Metamorphism, 2016, artificial lava, molten computer waste (main boards, CPUs, RAMs, hard drives, cables, etc.), corian pedestal, steel, white glass, 170 x 30 x 30 cm

Julian Charrière, Metamorphism, 2016

Mårten Lange, China Zun (Beijing), Man in window (Guangzhou), Billboard woman (Tianjin), Light ripples (Beijing), Glowing edge (Shenzhen), 2020, archival pigment print, 105 x 70 cm, from the series Ghost Witness

Lydia Ericsson Wärn, The Silent Witness, 2022, oil on aluminium, 25 x 50 cm

Paul Fägerskiöld, Abisko. 21 December 2100. Winter solstice. View south., 2022, oil on linen with walnut frame, 140 x 252 cm

Paul Fägerskiöld, Abisko. 21 December 2100. Winter solstice. View south., 2022

Paul Fägerskiöld, Nämforsen. Before Sunrise 26 July 4000bc. Summer Solstice. View east. , 2022, oil on linen with walnut frame, 52 x 82 cm

Mirosław Bałka, 120 x 80 x 15 / DB, 2008, wood, light, dimensions same as title in centimetres

Mirosław Bałka, 120 x 80 x 15 / DB, 2008

Charlotte Johannesson, Guardian?, 1984, original plotter print, 23.5 x 31.5 cm

Charlotte Johannesson, Rocket, 1981 - 1986, original plotter print, 23.5 x 31.5 cm

Charlotte Johannesson, Untitled, 1981 - 1986, original plotter print, 23.5 x 31.5 cm

Charlotte Johannesson, Parsifal, 1986, original plotter print, 23.5 x 31.5 cm

Charlotte Johannesson, White Flag, 1981 - 1986, original plotter print, 23.5 x 31.5 cm