AS OPPOSED TO THE TRUTH marks the first institutional solo exhibition of British artist Rene Matić in Germany. Matić’s practice spans photography, film, sculpture, and poetry, often converging in an examination of the social dynamics of race, gender, and class manifested in intimate relationships. Central to their artistic inquiry is a critical inspection of national identity and its associated symbolics encapsulated in everyday images.
The exhibition at CCA Berlin features newly produced photographs and installations. An underlying thread in the artist's highly personal images and works is a fascination with the way bodies, identities and expressions of political alliance intersect amid the global rise of right-wing populism. At a time when political discourse is saturated with rhetorical grandeur and performative gestures, the vocabulary of compassion and the condemnation of violence can effectively create an illusion of care, while masking the harsh reality of systemic brutality. In the face of this double-sidedness of power, Matić looks for possibilities of resistance within the sphere of interpersonal relationships. For the artist, intimacies and desires, however fragile or illusory they might seem, can give true meaning to our individual reality. By holding space for the confluence of the personal and the political, the exhibition offers glimpses of how people cling to and care for each other, and how we learn to live with vulnerabilities, despite, or in defiance of the so-called truth.
