Lobby

Gerry Bibby

Exhibition

6 May – 11 Jun 2023 Opening 5 May 18:00 Free Admission 5 May 21:00 Set by Eric D. Clark 27 May 17:00 RSVP by Gerry Bibby & guests

LOBBY

Gerry Bibby, Lobby. Courtesy the artist

In Gerry Bibby’s Lobby, dependencies are neither denied nor reified, but acknowledged as the foundation of any social fabric. Architectural elements, furniture, and text are blended together and brought into new constellations that suggest social interactions. By reinterpreting and reworking materials and the functions of objects, Bibby allows potential for protest, agency and poetry to emerge. Here, a table cannot only function as a site of gathering, administration, presentation, or negotiation. Through rearrangement it also points to the frictions, ruptures, and gaps in the interstices of the public sphere.

Biography

Gerry Bibby’s recent projects and solo exhibitions include Kunsthaus Hamburg (2021), NU Performance Festival Tallinn (2021); Busan Biennale, South Korea (2020); ‘PUBLIC’, Lumiar Cité, Lisbon, ‘Game on Tilt’, Midway Contemporary Art, Minneapolis and ‘In Case of Emergency’, O-Town House, Los Angeles (2018); ‘Auto Fictions’, Taylor Macklin, Zürich (2017); ‘Conversation in a Yes/No Landscape. Insect Incest’ (with Henrik Olesen), Deborah Schamoni, Munich (2016); ‘Flexing Muscle’ (with the Bureau of Writing), 20th Biennale of Sydney (2016); ‘Yes No Future’, Point Center for Contemporary Art, Nicosia, Cyprus (2015); ‘KUB Arena’ (with Juliette Blightman), Kunsthaus Bregenz (2014); ‘Combination Boiler’, The Showroom, London (2014); Frieze Projects, Frieze London (2013); and La Biennale de Lyon (2013). His work has been exhibited in group exhibitions in institutions such as: Museo Reina Sofia (with Henrik Olesen) (Madrid); Statens Museum for Kunst (Copenhagen), Institute of Modern Art (Brisbane), Kunsthalle Bern, Museum für Gegenwartskunst (Basel), Hamburger Bahnhof (Berlin), Arnolfini (Bristol), Serpentine Galleries (London), Bergen Kunsthall and Palais de Tokyo (Paris). He is the author of “The Drumhead,” published by Sternberg Press, Berlin in 2014 and has been a contributing editor to the Berlin based art magazine Starship. Gerry Bibby is Professor at the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich. He lives and works in Berlin.

Event

Performative readings by invited guests will activate the presented installations and bring them into new constellations.

The artist states:

„Much of Lobby has been wrapped up in an amplified call & response dynamic. Beginning, like most exhibitions, with the curator‘s initial invitation, a whole series of requests, expectations fulfilled or otherwise, obstructions, deals & decisions followed.

Invitations 1–11 as sculpture began with me digesting numerous images of table-shapes coupled with reportage of large-scale decision making. These followed with call-outs in the form of letters I addressed to all the city & state buildings, cultural institutions, and even the local fire station, in direct proximity to the ruin.

I wrote:

“I write here however with a wish to also include your involvement in the process of the exhibition’s making by contributing commonplace objects from your working surrounds.”

“To be expected the same area now looks very different and the numerous people who visit today will encounter an entirely other view through a train’s window.”

&

“Despite during this time and still not being able to engage electorally in Germany […] I would suggest my experience as an immigrant has allowed me a complex vantage point from which to think of place and my relation to it.”

 

Some replied, others didn’t. But now that all this combines in object form on site — I also wrote “[…] I am particularly interested in tables that promote the coming together of many bodies” – the Invitations are ripe for response.

A number of guests will join a gathering for readings of some borrowed & new texts, and discussion on Saturday the 27th May at 5pm. Please join regardless of having replied or not.

Until then,
Gerry Bibby“

Thanks to
Enver Hadzijaj, Tomaso De Luca, Julia Jung, Nick Haseloff, Timothy Davies, Klara Liden, Nicola Dietrich, Niclas Riepshoff, Marco Bruzzone, Xenia Bond, Valentin Cafuk, Mica Dans, Barbara Quintin, Alexandr Rossman, Angharad Williams & everyone at Kiefholzstrasse, Jakob Dietmann, Benjamin Hünninghaus, Frau Zimmermann, Mario Arnold, Lungo Damien, Nadja Abt & Nora Schultz, Eric D. Clark

With generous support by

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