No Quarter Given Images of Violence in Contemporary Art

Many signs of moral, social and cultural ruin afflict the human condition in the closing years of a century which has witnessed some of the most horrendous atrocities in history. Contemporary depictions of violence provoke in the onlooker an affective intensity, with art sometimes playing with an explicit and blunt language while, on occasions, resorting to subtlety and ambiguity. In the are of telecommunications, violence appears as excessive; it is not that there is more, rather it is visually multiplied in the media. In the society of the image, violence is constantly trivialized, transformed into just another product to be consumed. And language is equally tainted with violence: the discourse of hate. Is it possible to make the other’s pain our own, to feel the pain of the other?.

Artists
Anada Appleborg, Juan Dávila, Lleó Golub, William Kentridge, Zoe Leonard, Tracey Moffatt, Brosse Nauman, Simeón Sáiz Ruiz, Nancy Spero, Georges-Toni Stoll.