Castlefield Gallery, Manchester
10th August - 24th September 2006
‘Every normal person, in fact, is only normal on the average: His ego approximates to that of the psychotic in some part or other and to a greater or lesser extent.’ Freud
The fictional nature of the Ego forms the focus for Making Love to My Ego, a group exhibition that functions as an adventure into the realm of character and self-image. With a nod to popular psychology and a keen desire to explore different manifestations and understandings of the ego, a group of artists will be brought together to generate an inquiry into the subject.
Taken as a facet of the human mind that functions as a unifying falsity, constructed to conceal the fragmented nature of the mind and body, the ego represents fertile ground for exploration. The (un)reality of identity and character will disintegrate as each work reflects on the subject at hand.
We are aiming to produce a group exhibition that will include approximately eight artists working in a variety of media. Our selection of artist’s attempts to encompass practitioners who examine the ego from different angles, yet fit comfortably with the title of the project. We are selecting work that we believe questions or explores the cult of the ‘me-generation’, the existence of multiple personalities, the fragmented nature of the self, self-infatuation and the fundamental falsity of the ego.
The selected work will purposefully reject the notion of the self-portrait functioning to represent the artists true ‘self’ – a window to their soul. It will not characterise self-portraiture in a conventional sense, but depict the artist using ‘I’ as a medium through which they comment on self/identity or social analysis.
The show will not attempt to find the authentic identity of the artist, but demonstrate the ego as a falsifying entity. We hope to find work that misleads the viewer, allowing them to question the artists’ intention – What has been accentuated or repressed by the alter-ego presented? Is it a portrayal of the ego ideal, a socially constructed self, or the self-object in a devalued and degraded state?
