Céline Condorelli: In the Light of What We Know
Inhabiting the in-between spaces of Remai Modern, the exhibition In the Light of What We Know, invites visitors to encounter and experience the museum in new ways.
The project by Céline Condorelli asks questions about the role of museums in their communities and what these extraordinary public spaces can offer. Her artworks allow us to see, to play, to rest, to learn, and reimagine the world together when we are not ‘at work’.
Event/Exhibition meta autogenerated block.
When
June 29, 2023 – April 6, 2025
Where
Remai Modern
Céline Condorelli makes sculptures and play structures that live in the soft edges between public and private, art and function, and work and leisure. The works are often a reminder of how art museums have evolved from a European colonial model, and that while accepted modes of display are continuously shifting, the notions of taste, culture and value celebrated in museums are often dictated by socio-economic conditions. As a nod to this history, Condorelli often includes the work of others and the legacies of those who came before her.
Condorelli’s exhibition is also being realised on a different schedule and timeframe to the normal exhibition program. It started in 2022 with Conversation Piece (Spinning) in the Cameco Children’s Play Area – a carousel that invites people to spin, play and rest. The show has since slowly unfolded throughout the museum, and will conclude with an exhibition in Connect Gallery, opening on November 21, 2024.
Condorelli will invite work by other artists who help reveal and encourage new ways of thinking and behaving in museums to be present in the gallery space throughout the exhibition. The first is Rirkrit Tiravanija, whose participatory ping-pong installation Tomorrow is the Question will be placed within In the Light of What We Know. The title of the exhibition comes from her long-term textile artwork in the windows on Level 3, which also softens the edges between inside and outside, and was installed at Remai Modern in 2023. It is a sculpture, a piece of textile art, a curtain and a frame around our view of the South Saskatchewan River and the city of Saskatoon, situated on Treaty 6 Territory and the Homeland of the Métis. It builds on the invitation to play, rest and reflect proposed by Condorelli’s Conversation Piece (Spinning) on Level 2.
Carousels and curtains are not typical features of modern art museums, but Condorelli is inspired by how both art and the standards for its display have evolved over time. We associate curtains with homes where they create warmth, privacy, intimacy and style, not with the formal, muted and angular spaces of public art institutions like Remai Modern.
Textiles have been associated with women artists across cultures and time. Condorelli acknowledges the connection between textiles and women’s work, playing with scale to create contrast between hard and soft, public and domestic, visible and hidden, muted and joyful at Remai Modern, and to offer a soft, bright space for pausing between exhibitions.
The colourful curtain reframes and filters, rather than represents our view of the South Saskatchewan River in the Northern Great Plains landscape. The artist encourages us to reflect on how these lands are represented—and by whom.
About the artist
Céline Condorelli is a French-Italian-British artist living in London, UK. Her work inhabits the boundaries between public and private, art and function, work and leisure, in order to reimagine what culture and society can be, and the role of artists within them. Often using forms of sculptural objects or architectures, Condorelli’s installations make interventions to the way that people navigate or use a space, whether that is in the context of a museum or a children’s playground, a public garden or an artist’s studio. Often referencing the work of 20th century modernist architects across the globe, her work collapses and reinterprets boundaries to create sites and structures for supporting the work of others and to foster enquiry and discussion.
Recent exhibitions include Radical Playgrounds, Gropius Bau, Berlin, Germany (2024); School of Casablanca, Ifa Gallery in collaboration with KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, Germany (2024); Pentimenti, The National Gallery, London, UK (2023); After Work, Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh, UK (2022); Tools For Imagination, South London Gallery, London, UK (2021); Two Years Vacation, FRAC Lorraine, France (2020); TEA, Spain (2021); Céline Condorelli, Kunsthaus Pasquart, Switzerland; Kunsthal Aarhus, Denmark (2019); Zanzibar, permanent installation for the Kings Cross Project, United Kingdom; Vera Cortes, Portugal (2018); Proposals for a Qualitative Society (spinning), Stroom Den Haag, Netherlands; Corps à Corps, IMA Brisbane, Australia, including a sculpture garden which won Australian Institute of Architects Art and Architecture Prize (2017), Gwangju Biennial, Liverpool Biennial, Sydney Biennial (2016).
Condorelli is one of the founding directors of Eastside Projects, Birmingham, UK, and is Professor of Exhibition Research at HfG Karlsruhe.
Exhibition Support
Remai Modern would like to acknowledge the contributions of the Consulate General of France in Vancouver and Laser Impressions for supporting this exhibition.
