Céline Condorelli. Epilogue

About

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 Vision drawing (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, Epilogue marks not only an end to five years of P!, but also the beginning of a collaboration between P! and Stanley Picker Gallery at Kingston University London. In late 2017, the exhibition will travel as part of a broader project, continuing the spirit of P! within a different forum.