Read Syndrome: A short story before an exhibition by Kathryn Smith
Syndrome is a two person exhibition by Charles Maggs and Robert Sloon.
A syndrome is a pattern of several recognizable features, signs, symptoms, phenomena or characteristics that often occur together, so that the presence of one feature suggests the presence of the others.
The title points to a nexus of related concerns for both Maggs and Sloon: conspiracism, terror, the projection of identity, iconography of power and acceleration manifest in popular, media and Internet culture. Rather than being a mere reflection of these concerns, Syndrome is instead fueled by their materialisations in everyday life, in history and in media narratives.
While there exists a commonality of concerns, both Maggs and Sloon employ different strategies, means and modes of production. The bodies of work are connected by the dialogues they suggest more than they are by their relative aspects. Working in a range of media, Maggs and Sloon embrace dry humour, slick production and complex imagery to present a show where the paranoias of contemporary culture are both subject and object.
“My current work explores multi-polar space; physical, theoretical and virtual. In the increasingly digitally networked societies we inhabit, the western democratic-capitalist mode that has evolved through the past thousand years of human history or so has few answers to the accelerative pace of an amnesiac super-modernism. While the democratic-capitalist mode is held up as the model globalised nations should emulate to operate on the world stage, a 'post-historic' mode appears to be an unintended yet dominant doctrine.” – Charles Maggs
“I’m particularly interested in looking at various forms of paranoia, horror, banality, conspiracy and fear and watching how they tie in to my life as a South African.” – Robert Sloon
Read more about Charles Maggs
Read more about Robert Sloon
