Exhibition Launch: Wednesday 22 November 2017 6-8.30pm.

Prior to the launch Céline Condorelli will be in conversation with Prem Krishnamurthy at 5.30pm / All welcome

P!CKER Programme breakdown:

PART I: Elaine Lustig Cohen Looking Backward to Look Forward
28 September – 11 November 2017

Exhibition changeover
14 – 18 November 2017
During the changeover, the show will stay open to the public

PART II Céline Condorelli Prologue
23 November 2017 – 3 February 2018

P!CKER proffers a particular proposition: that curating, design, and other artistic pursuits in our present times must eschew the promotion of perfect products, instead presenting the creative process itself, with its plurality of positive outcomes and periodic faux pas.

This peculiar statement connects the activities of Stanley Picker Gallery, whose programme embraces the intersections of art and design within a university context, with that of P!, a hybrid exhibition space and ‘Mom-and-Pop-Kunsthalle’ that existed in New York City from 2012–2017. Founded by designer, curator, and educator Prem Krishnamurthy, P! operated with a quixotic drive to remake conventions of exhibition display, reexamine the relationship between aesthetics and political agendas, and reconsider accepted boundaries of contemporary creative practice.

With this collaborative context, P!CKER emerges as a series of two solo exhibitions – presenting polymathic practitioners Elaine Lustig Cohen and Céline Condorelli – alongside a programme of activities. Building off P!’s five year exhibition history while pointing towards future pursuits, the exhibition offers alternative models for considering interdisciplinary pedagogy and ways to work within the world.

P!CKER, PART II

Céline Condorelli Prologue

Céline Condorelli’s exhibition at Stanley Picker Gallery extends Epilogue, her closing show at P! in New York City (May-June 2017). Taking the history of P! as part of the exhibition narrative, Prologue opens up new readings of past actions.

Comprising existing and newly commissioned works reflecting on legacy and transmission, Prologue also builds upon the inherited remainders of the preceding exhibition, P!CKER, PART I – Elaine Lustig Cohen: Looking Backward to Look Forward. One direct link is Bauhaus-trained designer and artist Herbert Bayer’s Extended Field of Vision drawing (1930). Highly influential in its time – and now emblematic of an entire era of exhibition design – the work points to blind spots within Bayer’s ambiguous position during the rise of national Socialism, as well as his later reticence to acknowledge this compromise.

Condorelli’s show questions Bayer’s legacy and P!’s own institutional story. The original flooring from P! is laid out, displaying marks accumulated over five-years of exhibition making. A series of abstract, window-scale vinyls frame the views between the gallery and its immediate surroundings. These recall Condorelli’s previous intervention on the storefront of P!, as pictured in a new edition, It’s All True, Too.

Other pieces, such as Alteration to Existing Conditions, consider the setting of the gallery space, addressing Bayer’s isolated focus on sight directly. An upholstered seating unit carries tactility and softness, offering visitors the possibility to rest, converse, and observe.

A series of discursive events informed by Condorelli’s research unfold over the course of the exhibition. David Scott’s newly commissioned text, ‘Intellectual Friendship’, appeared as part of the gallery’s anniversary mailout in September 2017, framing the concerns of dialogue, development, and interchange embedded within the the entire project.

Céline Condorelli (CH, FR, IT, UK) is an artist based in London. Recent exhibitions include Proposals for a Qualitative Society (Spinning), Stroom Den Haag, NL, Corps á Corps, IMA Brisbane, Australia in 2017; 11th Gwangju Biennale, Liverpool Biennial 2016, 20th Biennale of Sydney, and Concrete Distractions, Kunsthalle Lissabon in 2016; bau bau, HangarBicocca, Milan in 2015; as well as Céline Condorelli, Chisenhale Gallery, London, Positions, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, and the publication The Company She Keeps with Bookworks in 2014. Previous exhibitions include Puppet Show (various venues, 2014), Additionals, Project Art Centre, Dublin, as well as exhibitions at venues ranging from the Grazer Kunstverein, Hessel Museum, Castello di Rivoli, SALT Istanbul, LUMA Arles, and others. She is currently Professor at NABA (Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti) Milan, and one of the founding directors of Eastside Projects, Birmingham, UK, as well as the author and editor of Support Structures, published by Sternberg Press (2009/2014).

Prem Krishnamurthy (b. 1977) works between design, curating, writing, and teaching. As Founding Principal of Project Projects, he received the Cooper Hewitt’s 2015 National Design Award for Communication Design, the USA’s highest recognition in the field, for his work with museums, artists, architects, and educational institutions. From 2012–2017, Prem established and curated the multidisciplinary exhibition space P! in New York City’s Chinatown, and has independently organized shows and programs at Para Site (Hong Kong), SALT Beyoglu (Istanbul), and Austrian Cultural Forum New York. His writing on exhibition histories has appeared in journals such as The Exhibitionist and in catalogues for the Art Institute of Chicago and CCA Watts. Recent books as co-editor include MATRIX/Berkeley: A Changing Exhibition of Contemporary Art and Draw It With Your Eyes Closed: The Art of the Art Assignment. Prem is on faculty at the Bard College Center for Curatorial Studies and Barnard College. His experimental, interactive monograph/memoir/manifesto, P!DF, was published by O-R-G in September 2017. http://o-r-g.com/apps/p-df