The challenge of ‘realism’ is to a large extent a self-created problem in
contemporary art, resting on an aesthetics of expression: the belief that art
(or the artist) must say something about the world. I have long felt that art
has not sufficiently explored an ‘aesthetics of absorption’,
[This is Paolo Cirio's essay from last year, introducing the show
"Evidentiary Realism" [1], which he curated. He basically formulates a
program for art that calls for the development of a new aesthetic for a
world that has increasingly become hard to see and perceive. In this, he
follows an
