What Are You Thinking

In the organizer's words:

"What do you think?" This question seems simple, even casual, and we've all heard it and probably asked it before. It interrupts our thinking before we have formulated our intention and found the right words. And although the question signals openness, an implicit assumption resonates: that every thought should be legible, divisible and, above all, purposeful. This demand reflects a general trend of our time: the growing urge for self-revelation.

The exhibition What Are You Thinking takes up Susan Sontag's seminal essay Against Interpretation (1964), which questions the need to impose meaning on works of art - to turn materials into metaphors and gestures into arguments. Sontag argued that the act of interpretation, if overemphasized, robs art of its immediacy and sensual impact. Instead, she urges us to regain our senses and encounter works of art as they are: complex and ambiguous.

Spread across the two exhibition rooms of Portikus, the exhibition brings together works by Pablo Accinelli (b. 1983, Argentina), Jason Dodge (b. 1969, USA), Florence Jung (France), Laura Lamiel (b. 1943, France), Lucia Nogueira (1950-1998, Brazil), Laurie Parsons (b. 1959, USA) and Bill Walton (1931-2010, USA) - artists who share a common concern across generations and geographical borders: to resist interpretative appropriation. While some works appear minimalist, others may go unnoticed: a photograph on the back of a refrigerator turned to the wall, rusty cans on a pile of driftwood, paper clips and padlocks hanging from the ceiling, a row of woven baskets on the floor. Over the course of eighteen weeks, What Are You Thinking unfolds as a temporal composition: works appear, disappear and occasionally reappear, so that the exhibition is constantly changing and evolving. Rather than asserting a single, fixed statement, it offers a sequence of encounters - leaving room for doubt, for unfinished thoughts and for forms that remain elusive and unresolved. New constellations and perceptions emerge through the change in proximity and in the relationships between the artworks. There are no messages to decipher - only invitations to accept ambiguities.

The title of the exhibition, which appears without a question mark, is borrowed from a work by Lutz Bacher (1943-2019, USA), who exhibited at Portikus in 2013 - a tribute to the artist's resistance to interpretation. In a cultural climate increasingly characterized by legibility and justification, opacity remains a political gesture. Refusal - of explanation, participation or productivity - can function as a form of critique.

What Are You Thinking is accompanied by a free publication, developed in collaboration with the artists and their estates, which continues the openness of the exhibition in printed form. With texts by the artists, poetic fragments and historical texts, the material does not offer conclusions, but invites further reflection.

Curated by Liberty Adrien & Carina Bukuts

Poster design: Julie Peeters

What Are You Thinking is made possible by the generous support of the Hessische Kulturstiftung, the Georg und Franziska Speyer'sche Hochschulstiftung, the Danish Arts Foundation, the Kulturamt der Stadt Frankfurt and Städelschule Portikus e.V..