REBUS VOL. 06
Opening: Friday, 14 December 2018, at 7pm
14 December – 1 February 2019
The authorial duo behind the photozine REBUS, Matjaž Wenzel and Rene Maurin, began their collaboration in a drama theatre, one acting as a photographer, the other as a stage director. Soon, they began to create ideas about a collaboration that would shift away from the assigned professions and would attempt different forms of artistic group activity. In 2013, this has resulted in the REBUS photozine, in which the authors juxtapose the visual and the verbal representations in a form that evades the usual illustration of a text or image description. They try to roam around other territories—such that lie behind the self-evident mechanism of complementarity and its predictable results. The space in which REBUS searches for its domicile begins to emerge when none of the expressive means dominates and consistently avoids any direct depiction of or reference to the subject in discussion.
As a starting point for the current image-text enigma, the authors recently picked a socio-political phenomenon that has been accompanying the civilized society from the beginning, but which is, with the evolution of modern technology, developing a dystopian and ubiquitous dimension that affects every individual.
The authors indicate at the content with the following exposition.
“Morals reformed—health preserved—industry invigorated—instruction diffused—public burthens lightened—Economy seated, as it were, upon a rock—the Gordian knot of the Poor-Laws not cut, but untied—all by a simple idea in Architecture!”
This is what British philosopher, jurist, and social reformer, Jeremy Bentham, who revealed his ideas in The Panopticon Writings from 1787, believes in. However, he did not live to see the implementation of the principle he was obsessed with as the basis of utopian utilitarian society. And yet, as he would never give up, his mummified head still rests on a mahogany plate in a glass-fronted case, and his crystal-blue eyes stare tirelessly through the polished glass into a world, which bows further and further down to his thoughts.