TU QUOQUE #18 - Exhibition as Desired Space

TU QUOQUE Exhibition As Desired Space - Jennifer Gelardo - press release - ONLINE SHOW - On view from May 6th 2020 @ www.63rd77thsteps.com For her solo presentation, Jennifer Gelardo has developed a site-specific implementation of the ongoing undertaking “Tu Quoque - Exhibition as Desired Space” in the form of a text piece from the video and audio recordings of a performance that based itself on the score titled “Tu Quoque”. For this online show Gelardo developed a mode that engages with the motif of the staircase which is the basis of the exhibition project 63rd-77th STEPS. In its attempt to understand the phenomenon of exhibition making, the text piece walks us through stereotypes of modern-day thought, regurgitating a sort of inner dialogue, about what it is that we are doing in art exhibitions. With the pretense to examine the established values and roles which constitute an exhibition – not only from a curator through artist to viewer aspect, but including the entire body of production and support – the research project Exhibition as Desired Space wants to unfold the utopian moments of an exhibition space, as a locus for negotiation, exchange and confrontation. Jennifer Gelardo’s practice has been combining knowledge from various disciplines to develop a subject that deals with the topics of representation, formatisation and group dynamics. Gelardo examines the interrelation of aesthetics and logic, of ornament and structure, and with this engagement she has been looking at contemporary wishes that are put towards art exhibitions. The general assumption is that exhibitions serve to underline the relations between ourselves and our affects, to sublimate them, to abstract the “first nature” (Christoph Menke) and to offer the tools to express individual aspirations with a distinct voice. Previous exhibitions of Jennifer Gelardo include presentations at the Galerie 1822-Forum (Frankfurt), Atanas Petrov Foundation (Pleven), Schwarzwaldallee (Basel), Galerie Georg Kargl (Vienna), Alaska Projects (Sydney) and Palazzo Lancia (Turin). Her body of work consists of performative interventions, fragile objects, text and ephemeral installations as well as media presentations. Jennifer Gelardo, born in 1985 in Loma Linda/USA, lives and works in Vienna since 2015. She studied photography and philosophy in Glendale/USA, Offenbach and Frankfurt am Main/GER, and studied video installation and sculpture in the Academy of Fine Art, Vienna. 63rd - 77th STEPS is a project space founded and run by the artist Fabio Santacroce. The name refers to the final part of a multi-floor staircase (the area between 63 ° and 77 ° step), inside a building from the beginning of the XX century in Bari. The program exists in different formats: site-specific exhibitions are alternated with on-line and off-site projects, meant as an extension of the physical and symbolic space. 63rd-77th STEPS strains and investigates the limits and potentialities of the periphery, redefining its spatial and temporal framework within a hyper-connected geography.