Michael Stevenson. Disproof Does Not Equal Disbelief

03.07.2021 - 19.09.2021

Michael Stevenson. Disproof Does Not Equal Disbelief

Curator: Anna Gritz. Assistant Curator: Léon Kruijswijk

The exhibition Disproof Does Not Equal Disbelief by the Berlin-based artist Michael Stevenson (born in 1964, New Zealand) is an unconventional invocation of his practice over the past 35 years. Since the 1980s Stevenson has developed an artistic language that operates at the juncture of economy, technology, education, and faith, exploring the infrastructural systems that condition these disciplines and their entanglement. The exhibition marks Stevenson’s first institutional solo exhibition in Berlin and presents a focused revision of his work, in which early paintings are brought into dialogue with more recent, expansive installations.

Fragmentation is the logic of display for Stevenson’s older bodies of work, which together suggest that our lives take place in the boneyards of industry. Navigation through the galleries is based on an analogy—that of a great fish or a whale’s digestive tract. In this way, the architecture becomes a corpus and, by extension, the contents therein, on the floor, on the wall, studies in its entrails. With this exhibition, Stevenson provides insights from the belly of our constructed world, thereby raising the awareness that challenging rational theories does not automatically and irrevocably equal disbelief.

Disproof Does Not Equal Disbelief is being presented in partnership with the institution formerly known as Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art (Kunstinstituut Melly) in Rotterdam, where a previous iteration was presented from September 20, 2020 – February 14, 2021.