Rainer Ganahl is a New York based Austrian-born conceptual artist. His work has been widely
exhibited at prominent cultural institutions including the 48th Venice Biennale, Kunsthaus
Bregenz, Austria, Wallach Art Gallery, Columbia University, New York, Gesellschaft für Aktuelle
Kunst, Bremen, Germany. His presence at the exhibition »New York - States of Mind« (Haus
der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin/Queens Museum of Art, New York, 2007/08), clearly indicates
Ganahl’s rootedness in the New York art scene.He is the subject and author of several
published catalogues, among them Rainer Ganahl: Educational Complex (Vienna: Generali
Foundation, 1997). Ganahl engages with and critiques various systems of education, and his
work revolves around three key groups: the ‘Seminar/Lecture’ (S/L) series, the ‘Reading
Seminars’ and his language studies (for example, Basic Japanese), all of which emanate from
the early 1990s. He stages his work in lieu of a seminar or lecture and does language and
reading projects with a special feature called the language of emigration. The artist has
described his use of images as ‘visual investigations’, and this is precisely their function –
sociological indexes to a form of intellectual engagement through ‘choice’. As Ganahl himself
has claimed: ‘A multicultural, pluralistic, democratic, non-arrogant, inclusive policy of education
open to heterogeneity is essential for society to survive.’ He studied at the University of Applied
Arts, Vienna (Peter Weibel) and the Kunstakademie Düsseldorff (Nam June Paik).
Brain & Body: Reunited
Costas Picadas
February 15 - March 5, 2023
Opening Thursday, February 5, 6-8PM
The Opening Gallery
42 Walker Street, New York
The Opening Gallery is pleased to announce Brain & Body Reunited, a solo exhibition of works by Costas Picadas. Installed across the first floor of 42 Walker St, the exhibition attempts to challenge our perception of the relationship between mind and body as well as our mental processes or brain-states with an arrangement of corporeally provoking art pieces, connecting with the Opening Gallery’s focus on the interface between the arts and biomedical sciences.
Contemplating the notion of the brain as a mechanism – a brain system responsible for spatial memory and navigation – the exhibition offers different viewpoints about the brain and its million neurons by centering neurodiversity as the fundamental concept about how we can understand the physical and biological origins of human emotion in the brain, as well as the conception, exhibition, and reception of the artworks.
The relationship between mind and body has kept Western philosophers occupied for millennia. Ancient Greek Philosophers like Plato formulated a dialectic that argued that knowledge, and reason were a distinct entity from the physical body while genetic empiricists like Aristotle supported different views. Centuries later the notion of normality in terms of the medical examination of the mind also changed while René Descartes (1596–1650) founder of modern philosophy and science envisioned a dualistic model that positioned the rational, free-will that enables voluntary actions as a separate entity from the machine-like body, which drives automatic reflexes.
Currently we notice an on-going parallel between the ‘visualization of the brain’ in the scientific and in the artistic domains and a fascination with the visualization of the neurons, but how can this visualization help us understand the invisible synapses of the brain and its relationship with the body.
Addressing philosophical questions of mental representation in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, Costas Picadas’ meticulous visualization of organs and his fascination with our colorful but also black and white brain and body challenges dualistic models of thought while he investigates the ways human societies can resist mind control with actual free will.
Further to the notion of mind control, current scientific research attempts to illuminate the biological nature of our inner worlds and our “projections” namely the ways aspects of the self are experienced by the individual as residing outside the self (Deisseroth K.). Drawing from Santiago Ramón y Cajal, the founder of modern neuroscience, and his claim that “knowledge of the physicochemical basis of memory, feelings, and reason would make humans the true masters of creation, that their most transcendental accomplishment would be the conquering of their own brain,” the exhibition attempts to trace the visualization of the brain's inner circuitry with a deep empathy for mental illness.
With this body of work Picadas’ interests traverse the boundaries of traditional understandings of the Body/Mind problem by exploring the philosophical question of how, as creatures with minds and bodies, we represent – and misrepresent actual and possible worlds. The revolutionary field of optogenetics allows us to decipher the brain's inner workings using light, however, we still seem to know little about the human mind and certain theorists argue that it is much too complicated to be controlled, while brain and electrostimulation experiments of the 60s and 70s were often unable to clarify which parts of the brain are stimulated by stimoceivers or electro-magnetic radiation. Cajal ventured into science as both an artist and a pathologist, while he became the first person to see a neuron. The scientist visualized the inner workings of the mind with thousands of stunning pen-and-ink diagrams and his exquisite, meticulous drawings of neurons in the brain and spinal cord proved that every neuron in the brain is separate and that neurons communicate across synapses.
At the same time contemporary art replicates, relocates, and often rewires the body for additional capabilities while electronically augmented or internet enabled internal organs might have a better function in the biological worlds. At present we can engineer additional, external organs to better interface with the technological terrain that we now inhabit. Nonetheless, Picadas’ solo exhibition reminds us that it is now and again instructive to turn our gaze from our immediate technological present where our mind and body are often taken apart and ponder for a moment their poetic reunification.
About the Artist:
Costas Picadas studied art at the Ecole Des Beaux-Arts and art history at the Louvre School in Paris. Picadas’ oeuvre has been exhibited at Queens Museum- Bulova NY, Paris Kohn Gallery NY, Denise Bibro Gallery NY, The Blender Gallery Athens GR, Donopoulos Gallery GR, Gallery Gransart Paris, Mykonos Biennale Greece, The Young Art Fair in Switzerland, Gallery J&J Donguy Paris, Some Young New Yorkers III at PS1 NY, Kappatos Gallery, Athens, GR, Gallery de Buci Paris, Gallery Anatole Chartres, France, Gallery de Nest Paris, Salon de Montrouge, Paris, W.G. Amsterdam, Holland, and the Festival of Avignon, France among other cultural venues.
Articles, reviews, and critical analysis of Picadas’ work appear in solo, and group show catalogues in addition to esteemed newspapers and magazines in France, Greece and New York, such as Zing Magazine, Absolute Arts, New York Spaces, White hot, Flash Art among other. Since 1994 he is based in New York City.