artmark galerie

Respect This picture cycle addresses the implicitness of transgressions that rapidly becomes more pervasive. Transgressions that infringe human dignity in Kant’s spirit and transform humans for the sake of another value. Those transgressions are always a form of expression and means of power relations, their final aim is occasionally also physical destruction. A president who regrets that a former dictatorship only tortured people and didn’t kill enough. A member of parliament who is planning on “tidying up” as soon as he’s in power again. Another president who is democratically legitimated and who executes suspected criminals by death squadrons. An ex-president who manages to tell mistruths more than 20.000 times in 4 years… The list can easily be continued. The background noise that results from these transgressions leads to a lower inhibition threshold of everyday-life transgressions: Human dignity has long since become violable again. Everyday-life stories of implicit transgressions: poverty as a result of one’s birthplace and race discrimination that the global public only becomes more aware of because of casualties. Humans that lose all hope for a better future in the water grave of the Mediterranean. Our civil societies run into danger of losing one of their key identity markers: the inviolability of human dignity. Squeezed out of our everyday consciousness, buried behind big crises of our time, this benchmark for our actions is slowly fading. A mistake: Dignity and respect are non-negotiable. Therefore, this picture cycle opens pathways for discussions.

Christian Cap lebt und arbeitet in Wien und Kärnten.