...As I scan today's newspaper headlines, I become increasingly aware of modern man's despereate search for certainty. Whether in politics, science, morality, economics, religion, or even education, the human species appears to find some comfort in the illusion of certainty. Political leaders are absolutely certain iof the correctness of their decisions until, of course, future events prove absolutely wrong. Advertisements are absolutely certain that if we purchase such and such a product, we will become rich, or popular or beautiful or happy of we will find fulfillment of one kind or another. Those with religious certainty find it increasingly easy to condemn those who do not share their beliefs.

However, seductively comforting the illusion of certainty may be, I would remind you that human history records clearly that when we are most certain, we are also most likely to commit our most shameful and heinously evil acts.

...Art, I believe, is a way of embracing the complex uncertainties of our lives in a way that provides meaning. Art is a way through which we recognize that our questions may be more important thatn our answers. Art allows us to perceive tentativeness as more enduring than permanence.

Picasso once wrote: "We know that art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth." I ask you to bring to mind of his painting of Guernica - inspired by the first ever aerial bombing of a civilian target, or Goya's Third of May 1808 in which the artist captures the terror on the face a Spanish rebel facing a French firing squad. These images are not truths, but they are the lies that make us realize truth.

The importance of this exhibition is that we are witnessing young artists selecting and creating their images - their lies if you will. And, in doing so, we see them coming to glimpse a richer, more complex and more paradoxical understanding of themselves and, indeed, the uncertain world in which we live.


- William Powell,
headmaster of the International School of Kuala Lumpur,
at the opening of the IASAS Cultural Convention 2004 Art exhibition

posted by Tae-Yeoun Keum   [4:39 PM]

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