Flesh at War with Enigma highlights an idiom in contemporary art that resorts deliberately and anachronistically to surreal forms and motifs. Surreal compositions unfold here in their empowering improbability. They appear as prospective knowledge, as pessimistic assurance and as explosive mises-en-scènes, running counter to conventional meanings – to what seems to us to be known, familiar and secure: “Some of the body’s movements and activities in these works might seem strange now, but they will become normal in the future.” —Enrico David

Enrico David, Kate Davis, Julian Göthe, Diango Hernández, Piotr Janas, and Alina Szapocznikow are showing works which, in a subtle balance between their similarities and differences, constitute an overall scenario. What emerges here as a central motif of the publication is a new link between body, desire and abstraction. The catalogue was published on the occasion of the exhibition Flesh at War with Enigma, Kunsthalle Basel, September 19 – November 14, 2004.