Arachnophobia at KAJE

"Rapid vacillation of attention is one of the distinguishing traits of phobia. The phobic mind toggles between two phrases: I must be certain, and what if certainty does not exist? The products of this cyclic inquiry are vigilance—which maintains its recurrence even if only psychically or phantasmally, and magnification—which assigns the feared stimulus importance. Combined, vigilance and magnification exaggerate material qualities of feared objects and impose supernatural power onto their immaterial [imagined] qualities. As a result, phobic thought generates distortion via clarification, producing an anticipatory presence that lingers in spite of perceived absence. This exhibition design explores how we might harness this phenomenon in the experiment of viewing art."

Photos by Etienne Frossard