Jacobus Capone
Dark Learning

July 26 – January 18

Jacobus Capone’s Dark Learning (2015) is an immersive seven-channel film installation that unfolds in performative gestures within extreme locales. Dark Learning tests the body and asks questions about our relationship to the natural world and how we come to learn about it. Capone is invested in the Chinese philosophical concept Xuanxue, which literally translates as the learning of the mysterious and profound. Xuanxue encourages a distancing of intellectualisation from actions, instead placing faith in sensation to embrace a deliberate unknowing.

Dark Learning was acquired by UQ Art Museum in late 2017.
 

Western Australian artist Jacobus Capone is known for his ambitious performances that are often undertaken in remote landscapes without an audience. Capone uses his body to endure extreme conditions as a way of connecting to the environment he is in. He received a Bachelor of Visual Arts, Edith Cowan University, WA in 2007. Recent solo exhibitions include: Double enigma, Michael Bugelli Gallery at ‘the tunnel’, Old Mercury Building, Hobart (2018); Passage, Turner Galleries, Perth (2018); and Forgiving night for day, Perth Institute of Contemporary Art as part of Perth International Arts Festival, Perth (2017). Recent group exhibitions include: Hadleys Art Prize (finalist), Hadley’s Orient Hotel, Hobart (2017); Primavera, MCA (2017); and Ramsay Art Prize, Art Gallery of South Australia (2017).

Jacobus Capone
Dark Learning 2015 (detail)
7-channel video, high definition, colour, audio duration 0:22:21 mins
Collection of The University of Queensland, purchased 2017.
Reproduced courtesy of the artist.