Having explored issues of cumulative labor, exhibition display, and support structures through her practice as an artist, teacher and co-founder of Eastside Projects in Birmingham, UK, Céline Condorelli presents her first US solo show, Epilogue, as the final project at the Broome Street storefront of P! Epilogue also marks the start of a collaboration between P! and Stanley Picker Gallery at Kingston University London. Staged across the two venues throughout 2017, the overall project draws parallels and contrasts between the work of Condorelli and the late designer and artist Elaine Lustig Cohen.
Within Condorelli’s practice, thinking and producing are conjoined. This exhibition assembles pre-existing and newly commissioned works, alongside a program of discursive events, to consider how history, politics, and individual ethics temper the judgments of artistic legacy.
At the heart of the exhibition is Bauhaus-trained designer and artist Herbert Bayer’s Extended Field of Visiondrawing (1930), borrowed from a private collection for Condorelli’s project. Highly influential in its time—and now emblematic of an entire era of exhibition design—the drawing features an exaggerated eye atop a male visitor’s body that observes planes of display in every direction. Yet the work also points to several blind spots within existing histories: Bayer’s ambiguous position during the rise of National Socialism, compounded by his later reticence to acknowledge this compromise. Furthermore, the focus on sight alone highlights inherent exclusions within such a disembodied understanding of exhibitions.
Condorelli exhibits works that reflect on Bayer’s legacy and P!’s institutional narrative. An abstract, window-scale vinyl frames the views between storefront and street. This is complemented by a multi-layered print on acrylic glass in a custom hinged frame, which hides and reveals simultaneously. Within the storefront, a series of large-scale drawings catalogue Condorelli’s practice to date, as both documentation and extension of past works.
Other sculptural pieces relate to the conditions of the gallery space and directly address Bayer’s drawing. For Alteration to Existing Conditions, Condorelli recycles fragments from P!’s display architecture, which are repurposed within an upholstered seating unit for visitors to rest, converse, and observe. Constructed from locally-sourced corrugated plastic, a sculptural room divider / curtain, Epilogue, articulates the show’s space while adding a further layer of color and transparency.
The exhibition’s final work greets the street: set in a custom typeface, the storefront awning spells after in reverse. This simple preposition evokes the afterlives and legacies of exhibition spaces—as ongoing loops of production and display, in which works and ideas initiate new contexts for others to inhabit. In this spirit, the exhibition will travel to Stanley Picker Gallery as part of a broader project, continuing the spirit of P! within a different forum.
Céline Condorelli (CH, FR, IT, UK) is an artist based in London. Recent exhibitions include 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).
Events program
Exhibition opening reception
Sunday, 23 April, 4–8pm
“What comes after?”
Conversation with Céline Condorelli, Robert Wiesenberger, Stella Bottai, and Prem Krishnamurthy
Sunday, 23 April, 4pm
Beyond Objecthood: The Exhibition as a Critical Form since 1968
Book launch and conversation with James Voorhies, Sofía Hernández Chong Cuy, and Prem Krishnamurthy
Sunday, 30 April, 4pm
“With distance”
Conversation with Kristie La, Céline Condorelli, and Prem Krishnamurthy on Herbert Bayer and the politics of exhibition design
Saturday, 20 May, 2pm