ETICA ED ESTETICA, ENDIADI O ANTITESI?
12.12.2015 – 28.02.2016

“Conflict: the subtle thread of unstable balance” is the theme chosen by Schio Municipality in 2015. Within this cultural framework, artists have been invited to take inspiration from the concepts of ethics and aesthetics.

As societies and cultures change over time, artists need to deal with these two antipodal concepts: ethics and aesthetics.
Within societies organized according to a cohesive and systematic worldview -like the Middle Ages, when powers were universal- art tends to serve ethics. Aesthetics, on the other hand, is the core of aesthetical and Decadent poetics. In many other historical periods, however, ethics and aesthetics weave together through unstable balances, like in Ancient Greece or in Zen philosophy.

Our perception of the relationship between Ethics and Aesthetics prompts questions like: Should art teach something, or should it just be what it is? Does it give answers, or does it raise questions? Does it make sense to talk about artists’ social responsibility?

Artists have been invited to reflect on and express themselves about today’s personal and/or social relationship between ethics and aesthetics, utilizing the languages of Graphic Arts and paper as medium.
 
The curator Valeria Bertesina

The exhibition catalogue is available.