Arthur Sopin & Andreas Rod’s No, It Is Not; Not Always (DT500mag, London) is a sharp post-conceptual rupture disguised as an exhibition — where portraiture, performance, and moving image collapse into controlled instability. Born from a 150+ artist open call, it reframes eccentricity as structure, not exception, and turns identity into a flickering system rather than a fixed subject. Positioned between Venice Biennale discourse and post-internet fatigue, it doesn’t explain the contemporary condition — it destabilises it, elegantly and without apology.
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THERAPEUTIC DENIM NYC
HE ESTABLISHED WWW.CACHOFALCON.COM AS A WAY TO SHOW HIS WORK AND MEANS TO CONTINUE GATHERING STORIES FROM OTHERS. FALCON DISCOVERED IT WAS MUCH EASIER FOR PEOPLE TO SHARE THEIR DARK EXPERIENCES WITH A STRANGER. HE RECEIVED MANY ANONYMOUS EMAILS FROM PEOPLE TELLING THEIR STORIES OF LOSS, HOPE, REGRET, AND LOVE, WHICH IN COMBINATION WITH HIS OWN PERSONAL STORIES, BECAME THE BASIS FOR A MASSIVE COLLECTION OF DRAWINGS AND PAINTINGS.
” IS IT IMPORTANT TO BE A SEER? MAKE ONESELF A SEER? THE ARTIST BECOMES A SEER THROUGH A LONG, BOUNDLESS AND REASONED EXPLOSION OF ALL THE SENSES. ALL SHAPES OF LOVE SUFFERING AND ALL KINDS OF MADNESS. HE SEARCHES HIMSELF, HE EXHAUSTS ALL POISONS IN HIMSELF, TO PURE HIS UNIQUE QUINTESSENCES. A HEAVY TORTURE WHERE HE BECOMES AMONG ALL MEN THE GREAT PATIENT, THE GREAT CRIMINAL, THE GREAT ACCUSED ONE -AND THE SUPREME SCHOLAR! THUS HE REACHES THE UNKNOWN!… -THE ARTIST, A THIEF OF FIRE! “
CURATORIAL STATEMENT
Photography today is abundant, immediate, and largely forgettable. This exhibition begins from that condition, not in resistance to it, but in recognition of it: documentary image-making no longer delivers certainty — only negotiated versions of it.
NO, IT IS NOT; NOT, ALWAYS reframes contemporary photography as a space between witness and performance, sincerity and construction. Drawing on the emotional proximity of Nan Goldin, the formal control of Richard Avedon, the rigor of Robert Mapplethorpe, and the performative downtown sensibility associated with Maripol, the exhibition treats the photograph as an unstable encounter rather than a fixed record.
Here, the camera is not neutral. It participates, stages, distorts, and occasionally reveals in spite of itself. Identity appears as something performed under observation, never fully resolved.
Against a culture addicted to clarity, this work insists on ambiguity as a method. Documentary photography, in this reading, is not a failed truth — but a contemporary one.
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