The Expanded Eye

The eye is the dominant sensory organ of our age, with more and more information received in still and moving images, and more and more information mined visually from spatial dimensions that are ever smaller and ever greater. The use of a wide variety of optical devices has long been second nature to us, and their methods of extending the reach of our sight--virtually and really--have instigated fundamental, far-reaching changes in our understanding of reality. The Expanded Eye takes a concerted look at an experimental side of art, where seeing means insight. It presents paintings, objects, film and video installations from the 1950s to the present, a spectrum that takes into equal account the playful experiments of postwar art and the radically altered premises of recent artistic practice. Artists include Bridget Riley, Robert Smithson, Jonas Mekas, Olafur Eliasson and Jules Spinatsch.