ISBN-10: 394240589X, 240 Pages, 2012, English

The cover of this exhibition catalogue is printed on mirrored paper, reflecting those who look or try to take a picture of it (attempts of the latter can be observed on Google Images). It is difficult to conceive of a better graphic design for a concept that the curators define in their introduction as: “Private – a word from the past, or so it would seem these days.” The exhibition seems to deal mainly with privacy in terms of space as the selected artists (from the recent past and contemporary) prove. For them it seems that approaches such as “stolen pictures” (people unknowingly photographed), personal video and making public what happens inside private houses have a depleting effect on what can be represented in a work of art about privacy. Maybe the only addition is the adventure into the “deserts of humanity”, in which are found those living at the fringe of society (drug addicts, prostitutes) whose privacy, indeed, has already being given up. So is privacy still about protecting someone’s intimate space? Technologies are one of the deadly threats to privacy, but in this exhibition they seems quite marginal, although the formality of social conventions can be compromised in a matter of seconds by the sharing of a picture or a video that what was not supposed to be shared. Here the perspective on privacy is more traditional and yet vast at the same time, giving the exhibition a “retrospective” quality.

Privat / Privacy – Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt