11 February – 2 May 2015
Opening: 11 February 16.00-18.00
Tensta Market indoors, Stockholm
Artists: Céline Condorelli, Johanna Gustafsson Fürst, Carl Palm
Curated by Dorota Michalska
The shop window is the space of visual speculation. It is the stage of visual ecstasy, of the diffuse spectacle associated with advanced capitalism and commodity abundance.
In his essay “Some Notes on Shop Windows” Frederick Kiesler proposes that the shop window should be performing a play, starring Mr. Hat and Miss Glove. He refers to the shop window as a stage, describing the street as the auditorium with constantly changing viewers. The shop window is a central issue in several of Kiesler’s works, in which he wants to attract the attention of the observers and turn them into active spectators.
Through a glass lightly is a project focusing on presentation and representation connected to Frederick Kiesler’s multidisciplinary body of work. The artists were asked to work with the shop owners of the Tensta Market to design window displays reflecting on questions of desire production, collaborative fashion and new mythologies. The exhibition aims to consider the shop window space as a tool of communication and possible connection with a larger auditorium than a classical art institution.
In collaboration with: Konstfack University, Tensta Konsthall, Polish Institute in Stockholm.
JOHANNA GUSTAFSSON FÜRST, The First Stone, 2015
JOHANNA GUSTAFSSON FÜRST, The First Stone, 2015
CARL PALM
(duvet peach) Stolen gems Stefanie’s name peach bleached into glass face as cocktail trees
Textile, 2014
(duvet yellow) & rest zest less let jaws back lax on square bert pay back pal on traxxx quest
Textile,2014
(duvet silver) 4 gravity lost flying bees on knees miamiani pretty pls:era wake me up be 4 U go go m bad dreaming
Textile, 2014
(duvet small yellow) + 1
Photo documentation from the opening of the exhibition Through a Glass, Lightly
(11 February 2015)
Review by Olivia Berkowicz
{…} Another accompanying event to the Frederick Kiesler exhibition was the opening of Through a Glass, Lightly, an exhibition curated by Dorota Michalska. Michalska is one of the students of this year’s CuratorLab, and has together with the artists Céline Condorelli, Johanna Gustafsson Fürst and Carl Palm performed artistic interventions in Tensta Centrum. Reflecting on questions of the shop window as a space of visual pleasure and capitalist excess – the artists had been inspired by Kiesler´s sentiment that the shop window should act as a performative stage. In Johanna Gustafsson Fürst’s intervention she placed a large rock or meteorite outside of the Interflora flower shop in Tensta Centrum. The mythical air about the object had been commented on by local residents wondering whether it had crashed through the window and why there was no hole to be found.
Carl Palm’s contribution is found in Istanbul Fashion’s shop window where the mannequins are clothed in puffer jacket-like objects. Futuristic yet familiar, Carl Palm’s intervention brings an avant-garde edge to Istanbul Fashion’s display.
The final art work in Tensta Centrum is found near the Tasty Fried Chicken restaurant where Céline Condorelli has placed stacks of postcards on a table. According to Michalska, the guests at Tasty Fried Chicken sit in different sections of the restaurant depending on their gender. The men sit in one area, and the women in another. In order to bridge the gap, Céline Condorelli offers the guests postcards as a poetic reading of the situation, in which the guests can send them to one another across the gender divide.