We should ask if this failure of ideology across so many disciplines is simply a transitional period to the re-establishment of new ideologies. We should ask whether we are just witnessing an accident, a coincidental collapse of flawed systems that await replacement by better-unified approaches. These questions are contained within Bill Botzow and Tony Carruthers' exhibition Shift , and I believe their answers are in the negative. It is not just these particular recent ideologies that have been shown to be flawed, but ideology itself, if it is conceived as a rigid understanding of things developed from a single, dominating perspective. I do not mean by this that their work is didactic, in the sense of giving answers.
Shift asks questions.
It asks questions in a way that holds the entirety of their suggested answers. I am reminded of descriptions of the great theoretical physicist Yoichiro Nambu. It was as if instead of one mind's eye he had at least two, giving him stereoscopic vision into physical systems. Like Nambu, Botzow and Carruthers build a complexity of perspective. They do so in part from the subtle changes of stance and thought required of the viewer to take in their work.