Display Show

About

Display Show’ proposes to consider display as intrinsic to artistic production and interpretation, as the process of taking shape that redefines both notions of art as work and art as exhibition.

‘Display Show’ is an exhibition process that unfolds through an enquiry into forms of display, including an ongoing survey of radical display practices from the twentieth century, such as those of Franco Albini, Lina Bo Bardi, Frederick Kiesler, El Lissitzky, and Carlo Scarpa. These approaches will be considered through form and function, as historical case studies offering specific display conditions. Evolving in time over a number of sites, ‘Display Show’ exhibits the context specific nature of display – how it is always subject to change.

In its first iteration at Dublin’s Temple Bar Gallery ‘Display Show’ proposes permanent alterations to the physical fabric of the gallery, starting from propositions by Gavin Wade, Yelena Popova and Céline Condorelli made after historical displays by Herbert Bayer, Eileen Gray, Frederick Kiesler and Adolf Krischanitz.

Its second iteration at Eastside Projects develops these sources further by mastering methods of reconstruction, re-enactment, copying, mirroring, modeling, reverse-engineering, upcycling, redeploying and monstering. They are encountered both through the ongoing material archive of the space (such as reconstructed mobile wall systems, Carlo Scarpa’s panels for Palazzo Abatellis, and Franco Albini’s plinths for Palazzo Rosso) and from a selection of new and recent artworks, producing new methods and processes of display as double, image, hybrid and design fiction.

The third iteration of the project takes place at Stroom Den Haag immediately following, and occupying part of, the forthcoming exhibition on Lina Bo Bardi’s museum display works, reconstructed on a one to one scale by Celine Condorelli and immediately put to use to display ‘Display Show’. The publication, ‘Display Book’, will be timed with the last iteration, taking the development of the project as a design methodology through the use of overprinting. It will be designed by James Langdon, and will also include contributions by Martin Beck, Hans Haacke, Chosil Kil, and Stefan Barbier Bouvet.

Can any object be separated from how it is shown, repaired, treated, classified, owned and valued? Throughout ‘Display Show’ we will follow a path that leads from the notion of doing-something-to-show-things (the technical term for which, in twentieth century art discourse, has come to be described as the verb ‘to display’), to the notion that those actions not only change the way we see things, but are also a transformation of both the things themselves as well as ourselves. We see this as a process corresponding to the alteration or refurbishment of existing conditions for the common good.

‘Display Show’ is part of a series of group exhibitions and productions within Eastside Projects that examine modes of display and the construction of a public sphere. The series started with ‘This is the Gallery and the Gallery is Many Things’ in 2008, followed by ‘Sculpture Show’ and ‘Abstract Cabinet Show’ in 2009, ‘Curtain Show’ and ‘Book Show’ in 2010, ‘Narrative Show’ in 2011, ‘Painting Show’ in 2012, ‘Puppet Show’ in 2013, ‘Trade Show’ in 2014, and ‘Birmingham Show’ in 2015. Each project invites new curatorial and artistic voices to effect change upon the existing conditions of Eastside Projects and aims to impact on artists’ practices further afield.

Curated by Céline Condorelli, James Langdon, and Gavin Wade.
 

Céline Condorelli, Charlotte Cullinan & Jeanine Richards, Koenraad Dedobbeleer, 
Flore Nove Josserand, Andrew Lacon, James Langdon, Leeds Weirdo Club,  Goshka Macuga, Rita McBride, Eilis McDonald, Nathalie du Pasquier, Amalia Pica,  Yelena Popova, Haim Steinbach, Gavin Wade, Nicole Wermers, Christopher Williams.

(After: Franco Albini, Herbert Bayer, Lina Bo Bardi, Eileen Gray, Frederick Kiesler, Adolf Krischanitz, El Lissitzky, Carlo Scarpa.)