History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.

Image: Installation 'Goran’s Stealth Yugo' 2009 Imma (taken by myself)

This is another review of an exhibition currently being displayed in IMMA. This collection belongs to Irish artist Alan Phelan and is entitled Fragile Absolutes. The title was inspired by the

Slavoj Žižek book The Fragile Absolute – or, why is the Christian legacy worth fighting for?

Taking the italicised words from this book and he uses them as associations towards 15 approaches for his pieces. Within this particular group of pieces the artist deals with themes such as: political history, cultural theory, popular culture, masculinity and modified cars. The collection includes a vast amount of varied pieces ranging from video, hand carved marble and papier-mâché sculptures. The artist sets up a very interesting compilation of the literal and metaphorical references, simultaneously providing background information on many of his chosen subjects and leaving them open to interpretation.

I thought this was my favourite aspect of the exhibition, that it was very open to interpretation. Another of my favourite aspects was the intense symbolism and use of the media in a very unusual and surreal way. I felt that the collection together had a message and was very intriguing more than anything else. It made you think about certain aspects in history such as war but used interesting media to portray this. My favourite piece in the collection was a collage which portrayed stills from a documentary based on world war one. This collage included quotes aimlessly placed across the piece. This was my favourite out of the collection because although the quotes seemed random, they were from both sides of the situation at hand. Some of these quotes were from the victims and some from the people who caused the chaos and destruction.

I would highly recommend this exhibition ot anyone interested in history or visual art.