Exquisite Corpse

[*The working group that comprises Luv ’til it Hurts–Brad Walrond, Paula Nishijima & Todd Lanier Lester–asked designer / installation author, Jakub Szczęsny to tailor Exquisite Corpse expography to the first 15 artists featuring in a traveling show on HIV and related stigmas. We envision that Exquisite Corpse will change from location to location. Szczęsny’s exhibition spaces (shown below) can be combined to fit the needs of new artists joining the show as well as a range of different host venues.]

Codename: Exquisite Corpse

[*When the project began, I wrote a piece entitled Why Make an Open Work? where I used some borrowed ‘game storming’ graphics to show the chaos needed within a project before it comes to a point. This logic showed up again when Adham Bakry made LUV’s first design elements (see image). While I don’t imagine that an art exhibition is the only ‘point’ of LUV’s two-year period of understanding, it does seem very compelling as we near the end of its initial two-year period. Codename: Exquisite Corpse! xo Todd]

***

Subject: Curatorial concept structure

1. cover: sexy image with title/names
2. LUV concept description with names (who does who)
3. curatorial concept as extension/natural consequence of LUV with list of artists treated as a pool to expand or choose from
4. exhibition concept: principles/overall technicalities
5. 2-3 pages of my sketches of the exhibition, can contain one page with references from my previously designed exhibitions
6. catalogue/Free mashup of most representative works
7. possibly a last page with a list of references (organizations/www), should be in the end to limit the amount of written words and content, so if someone is bored, doesnt have to read these or reads in another occasion!

Important: to include strong messages/shortlisting of important motives, eye-catching visual references, synergy motives (coming out from the status of artists, experiences of people involved, etc), telling about expandable/evolutive concept of the exhibition both in the choice of art. works/artists and in the set-up.

Voila!

Jakub Szczesny
SZCZ: www.szcz.com.pl 

More instructions for afterlife (next-LUV) designer

[*In February and back before Covid19 suspended travel (and life as we knew it) a group of LUV peeps met in NYC to work on the ‘next-LUV’ or an afterlife for Luv ’til it Hurts, a project that I originally charted for only two years. Those two years are almost up. We received some instruction/planning questions from teammate Jakub Szczęsny at that time, and again now as a new group plan takes shape. xo Todd]

1. which artists in the beginning?
2. how many of their works in the beginning?
3. what space? How does it look? Need plans/ etc
4. two motives to put together: social level of the reaction to the “plague” (magical thinking, morality, religiousness, alienation, etc) with individual level (spiritualization, development of everyday survival strategies, self-distancing, development of individual linguistics, etc)
5. I’m thinking about a set of cases that can be easily configured in various positions, cases that include artworks with illumination included, so they are very independent from spatial context of galleries and in fact invade the interiors like strange, dominating furniture. This way most objects: sculptures, photographs, videos, drawings, etc can be integrated into cases that are both aesthetic objects and transportation devices. The rest is happening on the walls, especially words : shorter and longer texts.

Why cases/boxes? 
1.They refer to contained secrets, something interiorized
2. when open, cases suggest that the viewer [has permission] to look inside
3. they serve as mere transportation devices
4. they become modules of para-architectural strength and suggest overtaking the space
5. we will always have a good argument when guardians of morality start criticizing the institution because we will show a penis or something: after lengthy negotiations with confused directors we will close just one box, not the entire exhibition, or we can make a movable cover or curtain (as Italians and Arabs do when exhibiting “confusing” Greek and Roman mosaics, I love this reference!) behind which “dirty” things will hide, permitting only adult viewers, I’m already shivering here!
6. we will need cases anyway to transport things!

Everything that happens on the walls could have both the elegance of good typography and something dodgy/punk/dirty in the way graphics, typography and choice of 2d images is done, it could also be somehow playful and coquettish.


Next week when?

Facebook
Instagram