黑料不打烊

Why do we consider it an insult to call somebody a whore? Do we imply that there is something degrading about being one? The word 鈥榩rostitute鈥� is so firmly fossilised in our linguistic systems as 鈥渂ad鈥� that this insult, meaningless as it is, persists as a verbal defence mechanism even amongst the most progressive people. The whore, the essentially despicable woman, exists in language only because of the one who gives his name to this exhibition; the conservative divinity invented by the English poet William Blake, Urizen. Dissecting the fabric of reality with his compass, this old bearded man undertakes the enormous task of dividing the world into fixed categories. For Blake, Urizen is a malevolent figure. He wages war on the poetics generated by confusion by imposing baseless and often outdated taxonomies. Although obsolete, these taxonomies continue to impose themselves onto reality at the speed of light: like the whore, or like the zombie police officers speeding down an admonishing index finger in Justin Fitzpatrick鈥檚 painting 鈥淪eeds of Urizen (Frieze!)鈥�.