Edgerton, Bullet through Balloons 1959. Gelatin Silver Print 11 3/8" x 18 7/8"Surveying art that tries to reach beyond itself and the limits of our knowledge and experience, The Quick and the Dead seeks, in part, to ask what is alive and dead within the legacy of conceptual art. Though the term “conceptual” has been applied to myriad kinds of art, it originally covered works and practices from the 1960s and ‘70s that emphasized the ideas behind or around a work of art, foregrounding language, action, and context rather than visual form. But this basic definition fails to convey the ambitions of many artists who have been variously described as conceptual: as Sol LeWitt asserted in 1969, conceptual artists are “mystics rather than rationalists.” Although some of their work involves unremarkable materials or even borders on the invisible, these artists explore new ways of thinking about time and space, often aspiring to realms and effects that fall far outside of our perceptual limitations.
Strangely enough, I am drawn to the image of the bullet shooting through balloons not because of any deep concept or theory that I see within the piece. Instead I am attracted to it by the way it makes me feel. There is a sense of strength, destruction, fragility and then in the end, peace.
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