2012 NEVER HAPPENED:
AN EPILOGUE
15-04-’23 till 14-05-’23
GROUPSHOW | 2012 NEVER HAPPENED: AN EPILOGUE
INDEBT is excited to present 2012 Never Happened: An Epilogue featuring the works of artists Tasio Bidegain, William Grob and Nicola Baratto & Yiannis Mouravas. The exhibition poetically reflects on the concept of truth in the era of mediatization and the persistent threat of an apocalypse woven into our daily lives.
The exhibition title references Jean Baudrillard’s essay bundle The Gulf War Did Not Take Place (1991) as well as the Mayan apocalypse said to have taken place on December 21, 2012. In Baudrillard's examination of the influence of media on our experience of events in reality, he introduced the term ‘hyperreality’. It refers to the inability of consciousness to separate reality from a simulation of reality. Hyperreality is seen as a condition in which what is real and what is unreal are flawlessly muddled together.
“Reality no longer has the time to take on the appearance of reality. It no longer even surpasses fiction; it captures every dream even before it takes on the appearance of a dream.”
—Jean Baudrillard
The year 2012 was marked by a heavily mediated event: the anticipated apocalypse. Movies, series, doomsday preppers on online forums, and memes on the internet all contributed to this phenomenon. Even though the predicted apocalypse did not occur, a sense of doom continues to linger among the current generation, particularly among millennials. In some ways, an apocalypse might have been the easy way out, given the uncertainty and insecurity of our present and future. Because how does one navigate a world with such an extremely pessimistic vision of the future?
The selected artists, all part of the millennial generation, offer various viewpoints to reflect on these questions. Tasio Bidegain (1996, FR) is a multidisciplinary artist whose monumental scenes merge analog and digital images into complex narratives resonating with the contemporary issues faced by his generation. William Grob (1992 UK) explores the border between reality and absurdity in everyday scenes through his series, The Lost Millennials, often depicting the loneliness of the human condition with a touch of humor. Nicola Baratto (1989 IT) & Yiannis Mouravas (1986 GR) engage in Archaeodreaming, a self-developed multidisciplinary methodology that combines archaeology and dream imagery to tell stories in which history, mythology, material memory, personal dreams, and the collective imagination play the leading role. Their practice translates into techniques such as film, sculpture, cartography, and publications.
2012 Never Happened: An Epilogue is curated by Emil Rosi Lanz and kindly supported by the AFK.
Baratto & Mouravas,fish, 20 x 20 x 10 cm,
Ceramic, 2023
Baratto & Mouravas,One fathom, two phantoms,
Self shot on 16mm transferred to HD and archive footage, 2 minutes and 45 seconds loop, 2023
Tasio Bidegain,And the Eye Caught on Fire
600 x 200 cm,
graphite on paper, 2021
William Grob, The Qualifiers of Hope,150 x 160 cm, Oil on linen, 2021
William Grob, Delaying Time,
110 x 80 cm, Oil on linen, 2021
Baratto & Mouravas, Trajan / Iterations,82 x 73 x 63 cm, Laser cut MDF, 2017
Baratto & Mouravas, L’ancien Regime,
48,5 x 79,5 cm, Ceramic, metal and wood, 2023