The Art of Invisibility explores the fraught and formidable place of religion in the ongoing history of visual art production. We begin from the premise that the categories of “religious” and “secular” are never stable. And yet, despite the inconsistency of these terms, we tend to speak about them as if their meanings can be taken for granted. Applying the categories of religious or secular to various objects, groups, and images, as recent events in the world demonstrate, has broad political and social implications. This exhibit asks how contemporary art can get us out of this bind. How can contemporary art help us to see religion and the secular in new and unexpected ways? The artworks chosen for inclusion in the show address these problems by approaching the relationship between religion, the secular, and art in two ways. 

 

Rethinking Transcendence & Aesthetics: today, both the power of the visual in art, and religion in daily life, are sites of critique and counter-critique, power and resistance. As art forms transformed over the 20th century, the coherence of the social value of the “aesthetic” has, like that of religion, appeared to falter. Works such as the Lux series by Bang Luu, The 42-Letter-Name by Robert Kirshbaum, and Benefaction and Blizzard of Blossoming by John Mendelsohn reflect upon transformations in the social value of religious, spiritual, aesthetic, or transcendent experiences in the present.

 

The Aesthetic Construction of Religion and the Secular: the past and the present are replete with episodes of the proliferation of images and representations of the transcendent. We tend to think of the secular as a site of absence, the neutral emptiness that remains once religious imagery has been removed. The secular, as well as the religious, however, must be constructed in part through aesthetic practices. Works such as the Covered series by Sean Gallagher, Stephen Henderson’s Golgotha: Mother’s Son and Golgotha: Mother’s Other Son, The Order and The Descent by Kathryn Myers, and Josh Ruder’s Shrine to the Self – in a variety of ways – work to enact or envision experiences of religiosity and the secular in the present.