ART / REAL

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About ART / REAL

The ART REAL manifesto:

1. ART REAL is real.
It’s about REAL art by REAL artists. It's not exclusively for insiders, outsiders, amateurs or professionals. It’s about being REAL. You know who you are.

2. ART REAL is sincere.
We live in an age of Rococo modernism; we’re too smart for our own good. Irony and cynicism too often mask the unoriginal. It’s easy to hide behind a superficial sophistication. It’s easy to employ gimmicks to get attention. It’s hard to be REAL.

3. ART REAL asks questions.
What is REAL? In a world where everything is subjective, what is realism? And what does REAL really mean?

4. ART REAL is apolitical.
It’s not about politics or political agendas. It’s not about expressing opinions or judgments. It’s about exploring the human experience and asking fundamental questions about existence. Life may be a game, a puzzle or a play; it’s not a vendetta, a contest or a war.

5. ART REAL is personal.
We are all on personal journeys; personal explorations into the essence of things; the nature of the relationship between our senses, ideas and perceptions and the external world; our conceptions of space and substance. Only things that are personal can be truly REAL.

6. ART REAL is paradoxical.
Paradox is at the root of our existence. The more closely you examine a thing, the more you move from certainty toward ambiguity. At the root of physics we encounter quantum mechanics, which tells us things that cannot be, yet are: a cat can be both dead and alive. The longer we look into the eyes of a loved one, the less we know what we see. Paradox is a fundamental characteristic of things that are REAL.

7. ART REAL is meaningless.
ART REAL is not narrative or literary; it doesn’t tell stories or manufacture meaning. It does not mean anything, any more than you and I mean anything by merely existing. An ART REAL work is a thing, an object, which presents itself to you for your pleasure. It simply IS. It doesn’t explain itself.


8. ART REAL is simple.
Life is simple, therefore REAL ART must be simple.

9. ART REAL is complex.
Life is complex, therefore REAL ART must be complex.

10. ART REAL is unfinished.
To complete a work of art is to kill it. An ART REAL artwork always leaves room for the viewer to participate in its completion. It is not an answer as much as a question.

Be REAL. Join us.