Richard John Jones, Party

2014, Artist

“To know of some is good; but for the rest, silence is to be praised”
Ser Brunetto speaking of his fellow sodomites to Dante in the Inferno.

Camouflage as a material and metaphor can allow us to question the limits of our perception and the technologies that mediate the act of bearing witness. As a material, the abstract shapes and muted colours of camouflage are, in themselves, meaningless signifiers – they are designed only to do something (not to be something). What they do, if they do it successfully, is disappear.

Conversely, to be seen, to make oneself visible is not done by simply turning on the light, opening the curtains or through a moment of self-exposition. To be recognised is an identical procedure to camouflage, except that one uses the signification of the moment to inscribe oneself within a particular context.

Either procedure leaves so much to be said for a life lived otherwise, of the things that simply cannot be said. What of the inarticulate, the outcast? What of the myriad of taboos that remain?

In response to these propositions, an event will be organised. A private dinner will take place in a private home in Barcelona (curtains closed) with a limited number of specially invited guests (and hopefully a few strangers). In the shadows, the pressures of being articulate or simply being recognised for what one is acting out will not apply. The dinner will be a celebration of the insincere, of the covert, of the smooth operators and the unknowables. (Richard John Jones).