The exhibition The Crucial Misunderstanding by Michel Tombroff originates from his recently published namesake book and gives us one more occasion to linger over art and philosophy. What do the two disciplines share and how do they meet in Tombroff’s exhibition? There are quite few examples of philosopher artists, names from the canon such as Leonardo, the French existentialists, Arthur Danto, Joseph Kosuth, and even artists with an academic philosophical past like Barnett Newmann and Adrian Piper. For many of these people, art remained parallel to their philosophical efforts. For Tombroff, one has to concede there is another way for art to do philosophy. Let’s consider the term “elucidation”, which would normally refer to shedding light (from “lux”, that is, “light” in Latin), clarifying, even providing extra knowledge. However, “lucid”, from which elucidation comes from, has also to do with shine. Something lucid is something polished, elegant, sleek, and simple. These adjectives relate more to the way Tombroff’s artworks elucidate his philosophical claims than to say that they make them clearer. The thesis of the book is that “representation precedes presentation”, a proposition having to do with concepts as abstract as “being”, “presence”, “event”, and “truth”. An entire book, let alone a great deal of background knowledge, is needed to grasp the argument, which remains technical. The artworks in the exhibition are not intended to unpack it; rather, they elucidate it in the sense described above. They are very simple and polished moments that offer a fleeting grasp on the complex philosophical conjecture from which they arise. One of the tools of a philosopher is the thought experiment. To argue for a certain position, one can provide an exercise of the imagination, asking to think of a situation and see where the thought leads us. An example is the ticking bomb experiment in moral philosophy, when one should imagine a bomb about to go off and kill hundreds while the only way to disarm it is to torture to death the person who placed it. We’re asked to think of the situation and choose what’s right to do. Nancy Nersessian puts it this way: “a carefully crafted thought–experimental narrative focuses on the construction of a model of a kind of situation and manipulating that model through simulation affords epistemic access [...]”. One can also say that thought experiments elucidate an argument, not necessarily making it more clear but offering a polished occasion to approach it. Tombroff’s artworks are not thought experiments per se but they elucidate like them. For example, the formulas on the wall, mathemes titled together “The Smile of Being”, are first and foremost sculptures that relate to the exercise of imagination typical of a thought experiment. They are simple and elegant access points to the technical argument presented in Tombroff’s book The Crucial Misunderstanding. A work like “The Wandering Cause”, featuring a video of children playing on the beach, is more than a metaphor about one of the theses of the book (“inclusion comes before belonging”). It is an illustration of it: one is asked to imagine these children as more than children; rather, we encounter them as an excuse to consider set theory, arguments on Alain Badiou and Jacques Lacan, the concept of being, and all that Tombroff’s dense book argues for. At this point, one wonders if the exhibition does more than merely elucidate a difficult philosophical theory. A way to answer affirmatively is to think of The Crucial Misunderstanding (this time the exhibition, not the book) in terms of Kristian Vistrup Madsen’s “artistic art”, or “mood art”. Madsen’s argument with this strange label (in fact, borrowed from century old historian Alois Riegl) is one of saving art from instrumentalisation, whether in the form of criticality – art needs to better its viewers – or spectacle – art needs to please its viewers. According to Madsen, art can exist without content but can be appreciated for the atmosphere it generates, while rejecting the pure hedonism of spectacular or merely decorative art. Within the framework of “mood art”, Tombroff’s exhibition becomes atmospheric, a parallel world of philosophical efforts, of personal struggles to prove a theory that might be beyond comprehension. Mood art is artistic art and through this lens Tombroff’s art exists despite its technical origin. The exhibition’s poetry emerges from the curtain of rationalism that conceals it.
Piero Bisello
The artist will give guided tours at the gallery on: Saturday, January 24, 2-4pm & Saturday, February 7, 2-4pm
A series of talks is being organized for this occasion at various locations in Brussels: Sunday, January 18 at 3 p.m. at Cloud Seven Sunday, January 25 at 3 p.m. at WIELS Friday, February 6 at 7 p.m. at The Merode RSVP is recommended
For further information, press inquiries, please contact: laurencedujardyn@gmail.com
Opening hours: Tue-Sat 11am-6pm
Address: Place de la Justice 27-28, 1000 Brussels