What Are You Thinking

The exhibition draws on Susan Sontag’s seminal essay Against Interpretation (1964), which challenges the compulsion to impose meaning on artworks—to turn materials into metaphors and gestures into arguments. Sontag argued that the act of interpretation, when overemphasized, strips art of its immediacy and sensual impact, urging us instead to recover our senses—to encounter artworks as they are: dense and ambiguous. 

Spanning the two galleries of Portikus, the show brings together works by Pablo Accinelli (b. 1983, Argentina), Jason Dodge (b. 1969, USA), Florence Jung (France), Laura Lamiel (b. 1943, France), Lucia Nogueira (1950–1998, Brazil), Laurie Parsons (b. 1959, USA), and Bill Walton (1931–2010, USA)—artists who, across generations and geographies, share a commitment to resisting interpretive capture.