“So Real–Surreal” | O’Hanlon Center for the Arts, CA

Arnaud Quercy The Two Cities (Part II) – Research on Tensions #29 Digital Print on Brushed Aluminum 50 × 70 cm | 2020 arnaud-quercy-creations.com Exhibited in: So Real–Surreal O’Hanlon Center for the Arts, Mill Valley, California November 11, 2021 – January 20, 2022 Juried by Michael Yochum Poetry by Cruwys Brown Exhibition Statement The O’Hanlon Center for the Arts invited artists to explore the liminal spaces between the real and the surreal—between clarity and distortion, reason and dream. In a time shaped by uncertainty, flux, and post-truths, the So Real–Surreal exhibition asked for responses that challenge perception and reflect the bizarre multiplicity of contemporary realities. Arnaud Quercy’s digital composition The Two Cities (Part II) stands as a meditative and philosophical reflection within this curatorial framework. Drawing inspiration from The City of God by Saint Augustine—specifically Book XIV, chapter 28—Quercy explores the intertwined existence of two realms: the celestial and the terrestrial. Though distinct in their essence, both cities inhabit the same space, their boundaries blurred, their goals paradoxically aligned and conflicting. Rendered through layered digital modeling, The Two Cities manifests as an abstract, luminous tension—a spatial metaphor for the struggle between spiritual aspiration and earthly entanglement. The viewer is invited into a symbolic architecture: one that reflects theological ambition, political duality, and the quest for peace amid separation. “The celestial city stands here before us. You who are its citizen, is it true that it shelters wisdom and peace by relating to divine providence? Looking at it closely, it seems as if in exile on our land. But far from being indifferent, our two cities struggle with each other as they both aspire to live in peace.” — Arnaud Quercy As with many works in his Research on Tensions series, Quercy does not resolve the dualities he evokes—he stages them. The Two Cities (Part II) becomes a philosophical landscape where the sacred and the political, the invisible and the built, the ideal and the distorted, coexist in a fragile harmony.