Ed Warner

Virgin with the kid

2023

Ed Warner (1982), Based in Berlin. Western progress and development, of which we are so proud, have brought us to this point. A society where hyper-individualism, loss of solidarity, and an exaggerated egocentrism rule. Art circulates everywhere today, and the world is totally aestheticized. But it is an aestheticization that only involves the virtuality of the screens. This generates hypervisibility, an excess of images. The virtual world gives us the perfect illusion, but it is an empty illusion, not an artistic one. It pretends to be a double of reality, a mere reproduction that has nothing to do with the creativity of art. In this scenario, we ask ourselves if the aesthetic illusion and the enigmatic power of art can still exist. Ed Warner confronts this contemporary way of living art. And how does he do it? Humor and thought are the only tools that are still powerful to build any depth. The strength of thought lies in the fact that it cannot be exchanged for anything. Humor allows the artist to be critical without falling into the vacuity of theoretical discourse. The artist prefers to move away from the traditional means of art, already very rotten, and to approach art through words. In this way, the artist parodies the kind of text we find in the virtual or advertising world. It is a blunt text, which seeks shock and paradox in a few words. In this sense, Warner's work also intends to reclaim the historical relationship between art and religion. It is not about religion as dogma but as pure sacredness. A sacredness that has always characterized artistic work, but which is now lost. In our contemporary era, religion has become a meaningless practice, a simulacrum of the original feeling. As the sociologist Baudrillard says, art is said to have become iconoclastic, although, in reality, it has become agnostic. It no longer believes in its own sacredness or finality. Ed Warner builds from the ruins of the Western tradition, always with an eye on the future. The artist does not seek to be the central figure here. His ego disappears and brings back the original artistic sense.