Suspension of Disbelief is described as the avoidance of critical thinking or logic when examining something unreal or impossible in reality. However as ‘reality’ has become ‘stranger than fiction’, this avoidance has become an increasingly prevalent and problematic social condition. Aristotle first explored the idea of this phenomenon in theatre wherein the audience ignores the unreality of fiction in order to experience catharsis.
Eight artists of various nationalities who live in Greece, reflect upon consciousness, revelation, and disbelief in the face of imminent disaster. They examine the question: How does one grapple with a reality that is at once shared, divided, and increasingly shaped by ‘alternative facts’, while scrutinising the phenomenon of hegemonic denial?

The whole world that I was living in suddenly seemed like a puppet show, tragic farce, and I couldn’t get why anyone would want to live that way.
-Robert Crumb

In an increasingly globalised world order, insular views may become overwhelmingly potent in the face of individual expression and liberty. Yet one is also faced with a commodification and polarisation which seems to have no bounds. Suspended Disbelief addresses cognitive reality, or duality, and the manner in which both place and identity affect perceptions individually.
There is a plasticity in the intent of each artist, a manner of addressing this intuitively that reflects their respective society. The duality of their experiences and the ways in which this is expressed reveals a struggle that may be described as both singular and universal. This process is expressed in a way that is at times intransigent, and at times unified. The works in this exhibition represent a litany, a palimpsest, of memory and experience that is suspended in a flux between all things credible and a state of cognitive denial.