Between the Window and the Door | 21 September - 4 November 2023

i8 Gallery presents Between the Window and the Door, group exhibition centred around visualised language, focused on artists that variously employ language as both a source and material. Featuring artworks by Renee Gladman, Iman Issa, Tania Pérez Córdova, Christine Sun Kim, and Iris Touliatou, the show will connect varied approaches to verbal, written, drawn and sourced textual expressions. Each artist's work tests the functionalities, capacities and structures that organise, perpetuate and transfigure information.

Both doors and their counterpart windows are manifestations of living needs within architecture. Above all else, inhabitants of any built environment require bodily access to be able to move in and out of a space. In addition to the necessity of egress, we also want to be able to see out of the spaces we find ourselves enclosed within, whether for stimulation or protection. Windows let light and information inside without necessarily having to go all the way outside. These universal structures work for us in our homes, offices, recreational buildings—but they also work on us, seeping into our perceptual interiorities. Doors and windows so often function as source-analogies for bodies, minds, and experiences. Where there is distance, reflection, and projection, there is an analogous window of mental images and virtual imaginations. Where there is action, suggested movement or change, there is a metaphorical door suggesting potential encounters, and real, physical activity.

Language—written, spoken, signed, gestured—has the capacity to be both image and material; memory and action; window and door. Language is a tool that can convey information, images, and spur action. Here, the question of 'is' or 'as' is not one of metaphor and simile, but rather a question of active and present, or one of narrative and removed representation. Often modes and tenses of communication overlap in some capacity. Equally often, in its relay, the content can also turn opaque or can cause misdirection—intentionally or not. Words can lead and equally lead astray. How much do you trust the narrator? Am I faulty? When language is utilised within an imagistic format such as drawing, sculpture, or even conceptual instructions, we are in an in-between. This means to be both and neither at the same time. It means to be interstitial. It means to have been inert and now moving towards the gerund version of any verb. Thoughts, ideas, and data are relayed through translation, transformed materials, transmuted gestures. Could there be some novel system of communicating—something that sits between the door and the window? Both as and is. A leaky container, a subjective document, an absent gesture, a circuitous conduit, a misaligned index, a slight impediment, a double-sided tool. Did I lose my place?
Is this it?

- B. Ingrid Olson

Renee Gladman is a writer and artist preoccupied with crossings, thresholds, and geographies as they play out at the intersections of poetry, prose, drawing and architecture. Working primarily on paper, Gladman treats the drawing space as an evolving laboratory for exploring blackness, the non-visible, structures of habitation, and fictional knowing. Gladman’s drawings have been presented recently in solo exhibition at Artist’s Space, New York (2023) and Zilkha Gallery at Wesleyan University, Connecticut (2022). Gladman (b. 1971) lives and works in New York, New York.

Iman Issa’s practice is concerned with the systems that govern the rules of perception and generate meaning. Issa uses conventional museological displays such as vitrines, plinths, captions, labels, and vinyl text to create frameworks for her objects and narratives that exist outside of a particular time or place. Recent solo exhibitions of Issa’s work include Taxispalais Kunsthalle Tirol, Innsbruck, Austria (2021); Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, Switzerland (2019); and daadgalerie Berlin, Germany (2019). Issa (b. 1979, Egypt) lives and works between Berlin and Paris.

Christine Sun Kim (b. 1980) is an American artist based in Berlin. Kim's practice considers how sound operates in society, deconstructing the politics of sound, and exploring how oral languages operate as social currency. Musical notation, written language, infographics, American Sign Language (ASL), the use of the body, and strategically deployed humor are all recurring elements in her practice. Working across drawing, performance, video and large-scale murals, Kim explores her relationship to spoken and signed languages, to her built and social environments, and to the world at large. Kim’s work has been extensively exhibited and performed internationally. Kim has recently staged solo exhibitions at The Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois, USA (2023); Vienna Secession, Austria (2023); and Haus der Kunst, Munich, Germany (2022).

Tania Pérez Córdova’s (b. 1979, Mexico) sculpture, photography, found objects, and performances use language to situate each work within a larger narrative, forgoing the autonomy of objects in favour of their integral role within a nexus. She considers media in an abstract sense, often embedding actions and situations into an object as a material itself. A solo exhibition of Pérez Córdova's work is currently on view at SculptureCenter, New York, USA. Other recent solo exhibitions include Museo Tamayo, Mexico City, Mexico (2022) and Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland (2018).

Iris Touliatou works across various disciplines that are necessary for each intervention. Manifesting in sculpture, drawing, sound, scent, and language, her work creates transient forms and shared experiences, to comment on labour, affective economies, and states of being. Touliatou’s recent solo exhibitions include Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland (2023); fluent, Santander, Spain (2023); Grazer Kunstverein, Graz, Austria (2022). Touliatou (b. 1981, Greece) lives and works in Athens.

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Between the Window and the Door: Renee Gladman, Iman Issa, Christine Sun Kim, Tania Pérez Córdova, Iris Touliatou