Cadavre Exquis
Adam Ball - Gordon Cheung - Nikola Savic - Piers Secunda
Preview: Tuesday 1st March 2011 6:30-9pm
Exhibition Continues: 2nd - 31st March 2011
Gallery opening hours: Monday - Friday 10am - 6pm or by appointment
Address: the assembly rooms, 8 Silver Place, London, W1F 0JU
To celebrate its new location and collaboration with the assembly rooms in Soho, Zero 10 is pleased to bring together four artists who have forged the gallery's ethos and "mental contagion" over the last 12 months.
Among Surrealist techniques exploiting the mystique of accident was a kind of collective collage of words or images called the cadavre exquis (exquisite corpse). Based on an old parlour game, it was played by several people, each of whom would write a phrase on a sheet of paper, fold the paper to conceal part of it, and pass it on to the next player for his contribution.
The technique got its name from the first game played, "Le cadavre / exquis / boira / le vin / nouveau" ("The exquisite corpse will drink the young wine"). These poetic fragments were felt to reveal what American poet Nicolas Calas characterized as the "unconscious reality in the personality of the group" resulting from a process of what Ernst called "mental contagion."
The inspiration for this exhibition is based on the similarity of the cadavre exquis collage and the curatorial process adapting the technique by assigning a section of the gallery's four walls to each artist.
For the exhibition, Zero10 has commissioned each artists to unleash the power of their collective unconscious by drawing an exquisite corpse.
