Before Reflection Begins: Jin Soo Kim, Wolfgang Laib, Ernesto Neto, Valeska Soares, Marisa Telleria-Diez aims to emphasize the experiential and multi-sensory dimensions of art rather than its visual and aesthetic aspects. In this respect, all the works featured in the exhibit seek to engage the viewers in an experience that goes beyond sheer visual perception; an experience that is primarily bodily and pre-reflective, involving environmental space and body-movement, as well as other senses such as touch, smell, and sound. The participating artists—Jin Soo Kim, Wolfgang Laib, Ernesto Neto, Valeska Soares, and Marisa Telleria-Diez—each engage different sense-perceptions and raise the question of how meaning derives from sensory experience. By doing so, they reveal in their works pre-verbal, sensual meaning that operates via affection rather than cognition, in a domain of (pre)consciousness rather than rationalization, or, as French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty suggests, "before reflection begins...."

Curated by Vesela Sretenovic
image: Wolfgang Laib, Milkstone, 1982/88