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THE HOUSE OF THE NOBLEMAN
CURATED BY WOLFE VON LENKIEWICZ & VICTORIA GOLEMBIOVSKAYA

PRESS CLIPPING (INTERNET)

DAZED DIGITAL

http://www.dazeddigital.com/artsandculture/article/8775/1/the-house-of-the-nobleman

Arts & Culture

The House Of The Nobleman

[Images of artwork]

Old Masters are hung in the company of some of the most notorious contemporary artists on the block in a show opposite Frieze Art Fair

Text by John-Paul Pryor

For what is a man profited, if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul? Perhaps this is one question that could be asked of any billionaire art collector. In The House of The Nobleman, artist Wolfe von Lenkiewicz examines our relationship to art and the role of the supposedly worldly or noble collector from a non-judgemental critical distance, and exhibits art both old and new (from Manet and Cézanne to The Chapmans and Damien Hirst) in a show that promises to prove contentious. Here, Lenkiewicz’s own “resequenced” Picassos will be exhibited against their original counterparts, effectively folding art history in upon itself to create an entirely new kind of dialogue. Dazed Digital went down to his studio to talk nobility, history and the reasons why a lost battle is a battle one thinks one has lost.

Dazed Digital: What is the concept that informs The House Of The Nobleman?
Wolfe von Lenkiewicz: When I started to plan the exhibition with the co-curator Victoria Golembiovskaya (by whom I was fascinated because she was instrumental in manoeuvring a submarine in the grand canal in Venice), I began to think about the notion of quality in the 21st century as opposed to the set of values pursued by Marsilio Ficino. The dislocation and decertification of a stable position in the world, which was formally the aristocrat, the king... the noble man. The artist, being perceived at the centre, was seen as a God, and within Ptolemaic concentric rings one moved from dog, to angel, to God. This is a hierarchical linear model, which has been attractive for five centuries in one form or another. The idea of this show is to explore a post-humanist form of compassion – the world is dynamically changing, and no matter how flexible our map may be to quantify it, we will be in an eternal struggle with meaning.

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