exhibition

Citadel 1 Front Room/ Killing Room

18.May.07 - 12.Aug.07
Wed-Sun 12-6

Private View, 17.May.07, 6.30pm - 8.30 pm

David Risley Gallery
45 Vyner St
London E2 9DQ
020 8980 2202
info@davidrisleygallery.com
www.davidrisleygallery.com
Tube Bethnal Green; BR Cambridge Heath, Hackney / Bethnal Green

Citadel 1. Front room/Killing room exists both as a living room and as an exhibition of one. It can be viewed as an ‘Ikea-style’ showroom and a stage set, where curatorial decision making and interior design intentionally converge. Taking up a third of the gallery space, the room is constructed from panelled wooden walls by Henry Krokatsis and a painted ceiling by Lothar Götz. The floor is a carpet designed by Hans Hovy and made by Helen Frik.

This constructed space is densely filled with furniture and objects that are all artworks in their own right. The chairs, tables, lamps, ornaments, magazines, records, TV screens and computer games all make up the living room. With contributions from Paul Carter, Donald Judd, Neil Hamon, Damien Roach, Gavin Turk and James Hyde, the room has it’s own ‘lived-in’ fiction. Other artists include Graham Dolphin, Jonathan Allen, Anna Bjerger, Michael Simpson and many others.

The work on show here all pre-exists the room and is put together like a large three-dimensional collage. All of the work comes ‘off the shelf’. The individual pieces that make the whole were not commissioned to ‘fit’ or play a prescribed role. In effect the room was shopped around for, as a home would be. In this sense, the art within could be seen to have gone through a process of commodification and domestification.

Citadel 1 is difficult to place, existing somewhere between an obsessive collectors home, a stage set, a showroom, a museum reconstruction and an exhibition of all of these things. The title also seems to suggest a crime scene. This is a room to be examined as much as occupied, every object charged with its own significance.