Goya Yoga

Goya Yoga
A one-night non-event featuring
the slack of Layet Johnson
Curated by Joshua Bienko

September 14, 2013, 6 pm – 10 pm

Ortega y Gasset Projects is pleased to announce Goya Yoga, a one-night non-event featuring theslack of Layet Johnson, organized by Joshua Bienko.

The philosophical twist to be added (to parallax), of course, is that the observed distance is not simply subjective, since the same object that exists ‘out there’ is seen from two different stances, or points of view. It is rather that, as Hegel would have put it, subject and object are inherently mediated so that an ‘epistemological’ shift in the subject’s point of view always reflects an ontological shift in the object itself.

           – Slavoj Zizek, Parallax View

Like Chindo­gu, Goya Yoga is a gesture toward empty gestures. No ideas about Yoga or Goya are at stake. The equation is a simple one aimed at equalizing materiality. Come to the opening. Drink (Goya juice, or don’t) and think (on a yoga mat, or not). Like Julio Cortàzar’s 1963 novel Hopscotch,which ends in a loop between two chapters, Goya Yoga presents viewers with a parallax view. Yoga mats become places to sit, cultivated backgrounds, or obstacles, while references to Goya refer to fruit juice, basketball shouts (Go! Ya!), or a stutter resolved. It becomes a game of reorganization where drinking can replace thinking and sitting can replace making. Johnson’s work consistently calls into question the significance and power of the master signifier, inviting viewers to question the material role of the object itself. Like a parallax view, the objects appear to change as our relationship to them changes.