Artist: Joe Gilmore
Exhibition title: Ars
Venue: FORM Space, Wageningen, The Netherlands
Date: February 24 – March 18, 2023
Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and FORM Space, Wageningen
The project of Joe Gilmore for FORM features his series of ARS book collages. By folding and combining pages from art magazines, he creates new references and meanings through the use of overlays and formal and conceptual countercircuits. The advertisements for exhibitions become active elements, contributing to creating a new experience where practical information reported on posters such as the place, title and date of exhibitions, lose their function and intermittently create new promotional dimensions that explore the subtle relationship between graphic and art.
Gilmore’s works take physical spaces represented by gallery advertisements in Mousse Magazine and fold them together to create new, hybrid spaces. Gilmore’s interest in the way printed pages are organized on large sheets and then folded to form a signature is evident in this series. He collected the full-page ads as a form of visual research and then folded some of the pages together in his studio, resulting in a playful exploration of book space.
All large international galleries have full-page monthly advertisements while smaller ones resort to fourth- or half-page ads, Gilmore’s work in a way restores a democratic balance of content by rearranging and undermining the hierarchy hidden behind references, names and placements related to the art world, challenging the printed space that is, after all, also a form of real estate.
