Post Hoc

Dead words. Extinct species. Ghost towns. Former nations. Destroyed art works...What do these things have in common? They are just a few of the countless phenomena to have existed but are now no more. These myriad disappearances are at the heart of Dane Mitchell’s presentation Post Hoc for the New Zealand pavilion at the 58th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia. A vast inventory of bygone things will be broadcast from the Palazzina Canonica on the Riva dei Sette Martiri to different locations throughout the city. This prodigious quantity of lost and extinct entities will be announced and transmitted via industrially produced tree cell towers. These barely camouflaged, ersatz trees are nodes in a communication network that will signal to listeners the entities that have gone before — almost like the trees that the cell towers have come to replace. “From our current perspective, the history of progress looks more like a history of obsolescence, in which case a retrospective gaze gains a particular importance. Responding to this, Post hoc seeks to symbolically re-materialise unseen, vanished and defunct phenomena in the present,” say the project’s curators Dr Zara Stanhope and Chris Sharp. A Latin phrase, ‘Post hoc’ translates as ‘after this’. It describes the assumption that an occurrence has a logical relationship with the event it follows. In Mitchell’s presentation, Post hoc evokes the question of the connections between events and vanished ‘past things’, without necessarily calling up judgement. Dane Mitchell’s practice is concerned with the physical properties of the intangible and visible manifestations of other dimensions. His work teases out the potential for objects and ideas to appear and disappear. His practice evokes a connection between the sensual and the conscious. It speculates on what is material and explores systems of knowledge or belief and people’s experiences of them. Dane’s exhibition history dates back to 1999; since 2008 alone he has held 30 solo exhibitions and in the same period participated in more than 50 group exhibitions. He has presented solo exhibitions both nationally and internationally in Germany, France, Brazil, The Netherlands, Switzerland, Hong Kong, Australia, United States and New Zealand. He has also participated in a number of biennales, including Biennale of Sydney 2016, Australia; Gwangju Biennale 2012, South Korea; Liverpool Biennial 2012, United Kingdom; Singapore Biennale 2011e; Ljubljana Biennale 2011, Slovenia; Busan Biennale 2010, South Korea and the Tarrawara Biennial 2008, Australia. He has recently held solo exhibitions at Mori Art Museum, Tokyo and Institut d’Art Contemporain, Viilleurbane/Lyon; as well as participated in a citywide project in Belgium, PLAY Kortrijk. Dane has upcoming solo exhibitions at Auckland Art Gallery, Auckland; Hopkinson Mossman, Wellington; and will participate in the First Thailand Biennale, Krabi in 2018.

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Palazzina Canonica, Riva dei Sette Martiri

Venice, NY