Pathos, passion and empathy – if used without a thick layer of irony – have been unusual commodities in contemporary art for a long time. Instead, the cool and distant attitude was selling best. But this is no matter of course anymore. Used as an artistic strategy, pathos is back.
For more than two thousand years, pathos was a desirable method to fascinate the public. The dream factory always knew how touse pathos for everything it could be used for. Contemporary art often develops new expressions that include well-known ingredients. The term conceptual pathos is on the tip of the tongue. An intense dialogue with an (art) historical reverberation from romanticism, expressionism and conceptual art. An open, discursive space in which the encounter of academical meta art and highly subjective narration is assuming shape.

Pathos is often set against rationality, used as an expression for the irrational. Such a polarization between rational and irrational, between intellect and feelings, is usually known by the orthodox medicine. Also contemporary art was characterized by the belief in the apparantly rational.
Methods and analyses strongly inspired by other humanistic subjects and natural sciences were often used.

Maybe a bit too uncritical? Despite all existing opinions about this, only few contemporary artists broke with that tradition so far. Onlynow some artists slowly move into the dark and hidden corners of the mind, searching for connections beyond any linear rationality – into territory where the outer and inner landscapes flow together. The outlines of some responses might be found in the exhibition Inland Empire^1.

Aage Langhelle

Exhibitioncatalog as PDF

Art Critic in Kunstkritkk.no as PDF

See also: Christianssands Kunstverein

1 Inland Empire is the title of a movie by David Lynch. It’s also the name for a rural area between two densely populated regions in California.