Joe Gilmore, EXIT

18.–26.9.26, 3–7 PM
Vernissage: 18.9., 6–10 PM
Artist Talk: 19.9., 1–3 PM

This collection of works explores the material, formal and contextual systems that shape book design, production, publication and reading through the expanded medium of the artist’s book.

The exhibition centres on the generative video Work in Progress (2024), a procedural book that exists not as a fixed printed object but as an algorithmic process unfolding in real time. Void Paintings (2024–26) establishes a dialogue between formal grid and abstract gesture, print and painting. The form of the book is further examined through ARS (2016–26), a series of artist’s books in which the material operations of folding and binding override editorial intention, giving rise to a second-order narrative.

Gilmore's work frequently draws upon the writing of James Joyce, particularly Finnegans Wake (1939), a novel that radically reconfigures language while also challenging the relationship between a book's form and its content. Although Finnegans Wake is a physical volume with a discrete beginning and end, its opening and closing sentences join to form a continuous cycle. This paradox is explored further through a realisation of George Brecht’s Entrance and Exit Music (1961), a work whose reversibility further complicates distinctions between direction, entrance and exit, beginning and end.

Gilmore will expand on these themes in an artist’s talk on Saturday 19 September, 1–3 pm.

Zwitschermaschine
Potsdamer Str. 161
10783 Berlin

https://www.zwitschermaschine-berlin.de