MADRID.- Hou Hanru, one of the most influential curators on the international art scene according to a variety of international publications, presents, as part of PHotoEspaña 2011, The Power of Doubt, a showing of 55 recent works (made between 1998 and 2011), among them photography and video installations from 16 artists coming from 11 different countries.

The exposition, sponsored and organized by Fundación ICO and PHotoEspaña, begins with the idea that the art and artists of today, like the world itself, are globalized. Through digital media – from fixed and moving images to the Internet – these artists explore the nature of reality, of truth and of dreams, generating suspense and doubt in their work more so than conclusions. The idea at the core of the exposition is even more apparent in places experiencing intense social transformations, above all in those societies that are obligated to move toward a globalized world that is open and free, which, in turn, imposes, often in a violent fashion, fictions of happiness and peace that flatten reality.

The works in The Power of Doubt express the necessary role of doubt in seeing, remembering, and communicating with the real world, as it oscillates once more between spectacular truths and dramatized fictions. Their authors, from China and Eastern Europe – places that have experienced drastic changes from communism to capitalism – and Southeast Asia and Africa – which must reckon with postcolonial memories and geopolitical conflicts – affirm the doubts and the collective desires of their societies, at the same time that they embark on broad artistic and intellectual inquiries of their own.

The artists
The show join together the works of the artists Hamra Abbas, Adel Abdessemed, Dinh Q Lê, Du Zhenjun, Thierry Fontaine, Shaun Gladwell, Jiang Zhi, Wangechi Mutu, Pak Sheung Chuen, Dan Perjovschi, Shahzia Sikander, Nedko Solakov, Dimitar Solakov, Sun Xun, Tsang Kin-Wah and Wong Hoy Cheong. With very diverse interests in artistic and intellectual pursuits, the artists give voice to the collective doubts and desires of their societies. They are more or less directly responding to some of the most urgent issues affecting our common life today, and “haunting” the obsessive pursuit of truth.

The Power of Doubt superposes site-specific installations and works in various new and old media, and somehow rooted in photography as a model of perception. These works embody the need to doubt the “mainstream” way of seeing, recording and communicating the real world, which again oscillates between spectacular “truths” and dramatic fictions.

According to the curator Hou Hanru "it is in total darkness, at the very centre of this exhibition, and brought together by the imagination of the artist, that we are able to ask the real question about the truth. Or to be more precise, we are able to doubt together.