Gray Wielebinski, 'The Red Sun is High, the Blue Low' poster, 2023

Regular price £12.00 Sale

NEW

2023
Digital print on 200gsm uncoated paper
59.4 x 42 cm (A2)

Exhibition poster produced to coincide with The Red Sun is High, the Blue Low. The exhibition expands Gray Wielebinski’s exploration of the boundaries of private and public spaces, with references spanning sci-fi, Cold War legacies and games. Transforming the ICA into an investigation of constructed worlds within worlds. In doing so, Wielebinski responds to our neighbours on The Mall: Buckingham Palace, St. James’s Park, and the Admiralty Citadel. The exhibition’s title is taken from a 1978 essay by science fiction writer and critic Samuel R. Delany. Delany uses the sentence as an example of the corrective and revisionary process of reading science fiction, in which ‘each new word revises the complex picture we had a moment before.’

In Wielebinski’s installation environment, overlapping worlds feel both familiar and strange. A large electronic basketball scoreboard signals to visitors their unknown role in some mysterious, surely unwinnable, game. The sun appears in multiple and sequential instances across the space, mapping a potential collapse of temporalities. Now a dark, absurdist bunker, the ICA’s smaller reading room stands in contrast to the light-filled gallery visible to those who place their eye on the aperture of a telescoping peephole connecting the two spaces. In its privacy, surveillance and exclusivity, the bunker also speaks the language of illicit spaces where separating oneself leads towards community formation rather than isolation.

Gray Wielebinski (b. 1991 Dallas, TX, USA) received a BA from Pomona College, Claremont CA, USA in 2014 before completing an MFA from the Slade School of Fine Art, London, UK in 2018. Recent exhibitions include: group shows at Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art, London, UK; Francois Ghebaly, Los Angeles, CA; Bold Tendencies, London, UK; and V.O Curations, London, UK. Recent solo exhibitions include: Love and Theft, 12.26 Gallery in Los Angeles, CA; Oil and Water, Hales Gallery in London; and Two Snakes, 12.26 Gallery in Dallas, Texas (2020). Recent residencies include V.O Curations, City and Guilds in London in 2021 and 2019 respectively and at the Academy of Visual Arts in Hong Kong in 2018. His first book 100 Baseball Cards was published with Baron Books in 2022. Wielebinski’s work is in the collections of Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA, USA and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Library & Archives, CA, USA.

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