“I’ve seen the Future and I’m not going” has been an appropriate motto for the duoDavid McDermott and Peter McGough’s work and life style. The two artists havemade it their purpose in life to escape the dullness of today’s everyday world withtheir dandyish attitude. The spirit of past centuries wafts through their aestheticconstructions: rural idyll instead of concrete, silent films instead of high-definition TV,a photo camera from the 1910s instead of a digicam. The two time-travelers’ art unfolds as a meditation on the transitory character of things and the illusionary natureof each here and now. The exhibition focuses on McDermott and McGough’s mostrecent photographic works produced after a historical printing process (cyanotype)and titled after their former home in Ireland (26 Sandymount Avenue). The series isa picturesque portrait of their house, a veritable gesamtkunstwerk, which transfersEdgar Allan Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher into the twenty-first century.
Curator: Gerald Matt
In occasion of the exhibition an artist book with an interview with McDermott & McGough conducted by Gerald Matt will be published by Verlag für moderne Kunst Nürnberg.