Fleeting Exits
Opening reception: Thursday 12 July 2018, 18:00 to 21:00.
Fleeting Exits is a group exhibition that brings together works that draw on notions of gender, escape, and liberation. Spanning from theatrical installation to robotic sculptures, these works transform into a microcosm of poetic biographies pushing the spectator to expand their understanding of identity.
Lindsay Seers’ Entangled² (Theatre II) (2013) is a film projected onto a pair of oversized eyeballs in an enclosed theatrical space draped in red upholstery. In this microcosm, an intriguing impersonator narrates stories in a vaudeville-style setting.
Turner Prize winner Laure Prouvost’s Metal Woman, Welcome Deep Travel Ink. NYC (2018) is a humanoid robotic sculpture that addresses the viewer with an uncanny, tranquil female voice. She offers the possibility of escape through a “Deep Travel” agency.
Rebecca Horn’s kinetic sculpture Mr. and Mrs. Brown (1990) also hints at the irony of repetition: a pair of metal legs is on an endless and pointless walk while tethered to a wall. Two metal rods with shoe trees, in lieu of legs and feet, tramp in place in a jerky movement with a mechanical whirring sound.
Ryan Gander’s sculpture Forces Outside of You (Because you cede your life decisions and consequences to forces outside of you) (2017) consists of a short flight of stairs leading to a large luminous door which suggests a grand entry into somewhere else.
About the curator
Marwan T. Assaf is a collector and art researcher based in Beirut. He received an MA in Contemporary Art from the Sotheby’s Institute of Art in London in 2006.