Ethan Assouline, Hannah Black, Mauro Cerqueira, Jimmie Durham, Morag Keil, Milena Langer, Delphine Mouly, Richard Sides
Art & Alienation
What form might a work of art take that seeks to convey something of this sense of alienation in the present? Art & Alienation brings together more or less recent works by 8 artists, most of whom live in Europe. Each artist presents extracts from what is often experimental and in-flux practice. These singular universes mask a shared idea: artistic practice is also always a critique of production. Artistic creation always already comes into being alienated in capital’s abstraction. The irresolvable contradictions on the social, creative and economic horizon of art only reach resolution in negation.
In the exhibition, the abrasive dimension of existence is inscribed in forms of deskilling, economic insecurity and détournement. False equivalences and errors of the mind haunt this exploration of a subject as old as the idea of modernity itself.
“The more labor is de-personalised and abstracted, the more it appears as creative and personalized.”
Benjamin Noys, The Persistence of the Negative: A Critique of Contemporary Continental Theory, Edinburgh University Press, 2010, p.165
Exhibition view, Art & Alienation, Kunsthalle Friart Fribourg, 2025. Photo: Guillaume Python
Morag Keil, Client, 2024. Photo: Guillaume Python. Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Isabella Bortolozzi, Berlin
Morag Keil, Material III, 2024. Photo: Guillaume Python. Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Isabella Bortolozzi, Berlin
Exhibition view, Art & Alienation, Kunsthalle Friart Fribourg, 2025. Photo: Guillaume Python
Jimmie Durham, Fribourg, 1993. Photo: Guillaume Python. Courtesy of the Jimmie Durham Estate and kurimanzutto, Mexico City / New York
Installation view, Mauro Cerqueira, Art & Alienation, Kunsthalle Friart Fribourg, 2025. Photo: Guillaume Python. Courtesy of the artist and Kunsthalle Friart Fribourg
Mauro Cerqueira, Casas num Beco Malcheiroso #5, 2019-2024. Photo: Guillaume Python. Courtesy of the artist and Kunsthalle Friart Fribourg
Installation view, Richard Sides, Art & Alienation, Kunsthalle Friart Fribourg, 2025. Photo: Guillaume Python. Courtesy of the artist and KIN, Brussels
Installation view, Richard Sides, Art & Alienation, Kunsthalle Friart Fribourg, 2025. Photo: Guillaume Python. Courtesy of the artist and KIN, Brussels
Richard Sides, If you never take it seriously you never get hurt, 2025. Photo: Guillaume Python. Courtesy of the artist and Carlos/Ishikawa, London
Exhibition view, Art & Alienation, Kunsthalle Friart Fribourg, 2025. Photo: Guillaume Python. Courtesy of the artists and Kunsthalle Friart Fribourg
Ethan Assouline, réalité (detail), 2025. Photo: Guillaume Python
Hannah Black, Politics (Red Display), 2024. Photo: Guillaume Python. Courtesy of the artist and Arcadia Missa, London
Hannah Black, Broken Windows, 2022. Photo: Guillaume Python. Courtesy of the artist and Arcadia Missa, London
Exhibition view, Art & Alienation, Kunsthalle Friart Fribourg, 2025. Photo: Guillaume Python