Vitrine Gallery is pleased to present the fifth installation in the brochure series by Adrian Lee.
Lee creates a contemplative environment with an ambiguous aura of reverence. The transparent forms introduced to the space feel strangely familiar, but we initially misrecognise them. We are confronted with a ubiquitous background format, a debased aesthetic hangover from modernism; clean lines, hygienic white walls, shiny plastic. The objects here are the off-the-peg retail display fittings, used to construct a neutral stage for consumption. There are no design details to distract from the shopping experience, no branding and no embellishment. Thus stripped they become, by default, strict adherers to the principals of minimalism.
These display objects are so mundane that, in everyday life, they slip under our radar, we edit them out automatically. These articles, designed to be invisible, are at the bottom of the object hierarchy, their only function is a secondary one, to display commodities to their best advantage. Here, negative spaces are framed, and umbrellas and shoes are invoked by their absence.
Decontextualised, however, these devices become to-be-looked-at. Arranged throughout the space other scenarios are evoked: the contemporary, child-friendly museum or the bland, multi-denominational airport chapel. A quasi-religious aura, coupled with the reverence some reserve for the £3000 handbag, together in a single tableau. Stripped of their function, these display units become elegant self-reflexive objects, ambiguous signifiers of reverence and devotion. Perfect then for the cleansed, aspirational environment of Bermondsey Square.
Making use of the exploratory premise behind brochure, Lee will re-work the fittings within the space several times throughout its duration; The times this will happen will be unannounced. He will also utilise the gallery’s unusual public openness by dealing with the install and install changes in a performative nature.
To accompany the Private View of the installation, a series of video works by the artist will be screened in shortwave cinema.
Adrian Lee works in video, performance and sculpture. Lee identifies the insidious meanings that abound in the visual and verbal material that surrounds us. The trappings of a commercial culture, which form the background noise to our daily lives, are reworked and re-examined in his darkly humourous practice which explores the processes of communication and persuasion used on micro and international scales.
Adrian Lee recently traveled from Israel across the Mediterranean Sea with artist group Exterritory, producing an installation in Nicosia, Cyprus at the culmination of the voyage. Over the last few years his practice has taken him to Kabul, Hamburg, Rotterdam, Istanbul, and Damascus and last year he orchestrated the large-scale performance piece All Marble Crew in and around the Royal Opera House for the Deloitte Ignite festival. He is the co-founder of Artvehicle a London-based contemporary art review website for which he writes the editorials.
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brochure is a series of installation works at Vitrine Gallery, produced in a process-led manner; A platform for artists to work with the space site-responsively. The exhibitions are informal in nature and happen quickly. The series encourages fresh and gestural works that occupy the space sporadically throughout the gallery’s main program. Artists are encouraged to try out new, experimental and un-cluttered ideas, the space becoming a platform for them to test works.
Each artist is given the entire space for a short period. The preparation period is short, encouraging the fresh approach to creating work away from the confines of a formal exhibition. The aim (and reason) of curating this as a series is for a dialogue to grow between the works and between each artist’s reaction to this unique exhibition space.
PREVIOUS ARTISTS: (1) Natasha Rees (2) Rennard Milner (3) Edwin Burdis (4) Kirsty Tinkler.
brochure is curated by Alys Williams.
