Everything always has its opposite within itself…

ALICE BLACK welcomes 2020 with ‘Twilight of the Idols’, a group exhibition which explores the theme of Apollonian & Dionysian duality through a contemporary art lens. The exhibition features a strong international line up of both emerging and established artists: Sol Bailey-Barker, Blue Republic, Joy Bonfield-Colombara, George Condo, Mary Reid Kelley & Patrick Kelley, Sasha Okun, Sola Olulode, Irvin Pascal, Anousha Payne, Tristan Pigott, Adam Popli, Harriet Poznansky, Blue Republic, Frankie Roberts, Alexander Rosenberg & Chica Seal. Bringing together painting, sculpture, video, installation, ceramics, works on paper, metal work, photography and performance art, the exhibition will launch with a Preview at our Soho, London space on Thursday 16 January 2020 (6-8pm), All Welcome.

It is by those two art sponsoring deities, Apollo and Dionysus, that we are made to recognize the tremendous split. Developed alongside one another, usually in fierce opposition, each by its taunts forcing the other to more energetic production...until at last the pair accepted the yoke of marriage.
[Friedrich Nietzsche: The Birth of Tragedy, Francis Golfing transl. 1844 – 1900]

Apollo & Dionysus, two figures handed down to us from antiquity are familiar in name but their significance is in need of renewed examination. Apollo - god of the Sun, embodies order, balance and logic; Dionysus - god of wine and dance represents excess, the pursuit of pleasure and careless abandon. Seated at opposing ends of a spectrum, the characters represent our dual natures. But the Ancient Greeks did not consider them to be rivals and Friedrich Nietzsche saw their fusion as ideal. In the context of the marked polarity in the life and politics of the external world, this exhibition seeks to reflect and express our inner situation - a pendulum is in constant motion between Bacchanalian escapism and self-sought Apollonian mindfulness, with the potential to internally ground us in the face of external flux.