Real Realism, is based on a short manifesto by Mark Blickley, “Real Realism: An Art Manifesto for the Disenchanted.”
The Real Realism manifesto is a 21st century interpretation of Platonic Realism (sometimes referred to as Platonic Idealism). Ancient Greece is often the inspirational foundation for historical and present-day artistic Neo-Renaissances. Platonic Realism, as is Blickley’s Real Realism, are deeply entrenched in a dualistic theory of Body versus Mind.
Plato insists that Truth cannot be found in the physical world, because our senses are unreliable and all we see around us is full of change and decay. He claims that truth and beauty are eternal, immutable and perfect. Truth (knowledge) is only discoverable by reason, thinking things through in rational, logical ways while the body circumvents truth and beauty because it is rooted in opinions and not objective truth. Plato believed humanity does not learn and what we call learning is really a process of recollection. He reminds us that Socrates did not teach knowledge, he asked questions. Plato states that whenever we come to know something, we are remembering some truth that we learned before this life. He writes that our prior life couldn’t have been in a reality like our own as it must have been in an eternal reality unaffected by physical change and decay. The body, our physical world, is an illusion dictated by changing sensations which are simply opinions and not Truth. The only part of us that is unaffected by change and decay is the non-physical soul. Bodies change and decay; our souls are pre-existing and able to recollect Truth.
“WE THEREFORE PROCLAIM… Real Realism acknowledges yesterday and tomorrow is simultaneous. We obliterate this time element by a retrograde motion that would penetrate consciousness, reassuring us that a renaissance might still be thinkable.”
Real Realism is an aesthetic rooted in a secular dualism that integrates images and genres in the hopes of inspiring viewers to create their own personal interpretation of Real Realism by giving rise to a viewer’s silent scream questioning of, “What is Real to me?” Five artists—four from North America and one from Ukraine—create worlds of imagination that transcend the physical world of opinions and strives to tap into the truths of our collective unconscious.
Julia Kissina is an artist and a writer who splits her time between Berlin and New York. Born in Kiev, Ukraine, she studied dramatic writing in Moscow, then moved to Germany and graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. Her drawing highlights cognitive deviations related to mystical cultural/aesthetic thinking that is reflective of ritual and ceremony.
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Amy Bassin is a multi-disciplinary artist working in Long Island City. With a background in abstract drawing and painting, her photography, moving images, and works on paper focus on metaphor and ambiguity. Her photo collage on fabric, “Undefined Distance,” explores an unfilled yearning for wholeness
"Undefined Distance", 2019
Photo collage print on fabric
54 x 42 inches
Price: $800
Jack Henry is from Flint, Michigan and lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. He uses found objects as transformative tools by casting them in resin to invoke the ghostly presence of what once was--- remnants of truth and innocence. Henry’s sculptures are motivated by the impermanent connections between metaphysical experience and nature. His work is like a dream being used to solve the fundamental question of our existence, "How do the disconnected become reconnected to the truth?"
"Trove", 2021 "Untitled", 2022
Epoxy resin and steel Epoxy resin, marble
21 x 18 x 12 inches dust, cement and steel
21 x 19 x 14 inches
Price: $3,000 Price: $3,000
Brian Zegeer was born in Lexington, Kentucky. His works encounter the Appalachian and Lebanese landscapes of his parentage in highly-charged networks of belonging and collective hallucination. His sculpture, “As with those who are dying.” is homage to the forces that bind us to genealogical patterns, encourage precipitous growth in our carbon footprints, twist our bodies into better compliance with a monolithic truth that existed before our birth.
"Stochastic Garden, as with all those who are dying", 2022
archival pigment prints, plywood, galvanized steel wire, aluminum conduit, plexiglass, found objects, lcd monitor, mixed-media animation.
dimensions variable
Price: $3,500
Laura Horne (Curator) is a multi-disciplinary artist, curator and writer living and working in New York City. There is a consistent subtext that runs through Horne's work, an undercurrent of mystery. Laura’s sculptural collage from her series, "The Ubiquity of Things" implicates the viewer in subtle ways that challenge the notions of material reality and the reliability of the senses to correspond with what exists and what is really real.
"Untitled: Ubiquity of Things", 2022
Found objects and pigment prints
detail - Variable dimensions
Price: $550
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