Mirus Gallery San Francisco opened a couple of weeks ago “Aporias”, an abstract group exhibition featuring the works of Anatoly Akue, Christian Calabro, Julia Benz, Quintessenz and Seleka. 

“The aporia of art, pulled between regression to literal magic or surrender of the mimetic impulse to thing like rationality, dictates its law of motion; the aporia cannot be eliminated. The depth of the process, which every artwork is, is excavated by the irreconcilability of these elements; it must be imported into the idea of art as an image of reconciliation.”  Theodor W. Adorno, Esthetic Theory

One of the popular definitions of Aporia is an expression of real or pretended doubt or uncertainty especially for rhetorical effect”. Yet there is much more to this word and its use as a tool to penetrate further for truth through a paradoxical questioning and deconstructing of a subject.


Mirus Gallery San Francisco presents “Aporias” a group exhibition of international artists whose work revolves around the absence of narrative or a representational subject.
At quick glance one might call the work abstract, yet I prefer to acknowledge the fact that these emerging artists work is detached from ahistorical sense or the term abstract painter. By leaving representational elements out of their work it has now become a form of representational abstraction.
This new-found paradox is where I have focused the lens to view this group of emerging artists. By removing something and creating a void, a new something is gained. “Aporias” reflects a new look at emerging artists working within this new post-historical subject of ambiguity, that ask more questions than they answer, and as the title suggests are “a useful expression of doubt”. It is this raising of doubt through painting that each artist exhibiting represents through their work.

Aporias Group Exhibition will be on display through April 27, 2019 at the gallery located on 540 HowardStreet, SanFrancisco, California.

Akue – Moon Eclipse Series

Calabro Downtown 2018

Julia Benz BOOMERANG 2019

Quintessenz Selbstläufer No51 2018

Seleka MIRROR.

Author: Fran

Founder and editor of Urbanite. Street Art lover who after the finishing her MA thesis on the Mexican and Norwegian muralist movement in the 1920-50s, developed a fascination for street art and graffiti that eventually led to collaborations with different art blogs, including the creation of this one.