Céline Condorelli: In the Light of What We Know

“Let’s build incongruous and problematic assemblages… The artist dislodges the authority of ownership and expertise that the custodian holds onto. Penetrating the confinement of the storage space, the outside eye transgresses. It selects and releases a response from the object, bringing it out of the dark by re-appropriating, re-collecting, and re-classifying it through a heterodox dialogue of elucidation.” —Clémentine Deliss, “Manifesto for the Rights of Access to Colonial Collections Sequestered in Western Europe”, in Uneven Bodies, 2020

In the Light of What We Know weaves through Remai Modern’s public spaces. In the Connect Gallery, Céline Condorelli reframes the museum’s collection by including her own artwork and placing it in dialogue with other artists’ works. Presented in unexpected clusters of relations, the more than 75 works she has selected form new stories through an artist’s eye.

Meanwhile, in the vast and often unadorned interstitial spaces of the museum, the artist’s installations invite us to ask what museums are for, how guests should behave within them, what work underlies the visitor experience, and ultimately how we might be able to re-think the confining norms of these spaces and their exclusionary, extractive, and inequitable foundations. Condorelli encourages behaviour such as play. She also reframes place and art history to gain deeper knowledge and greater equity for artists and artworks. Her work creates lenses through which we can see our surroundings in a new light.

The installation in the Connect Gallery is framed by two monumental works by Condorelli. The first, The Sun Shines through a Hole in the Clouds (2023), is a 23 metre-long textile piece that spans the gallery’s ceiling in soft drapes that filter the light in the space. It invites a new way of seeing that we might apply to all the works in the room and throughout the museum. The piece is a compilation of microscopic views of the materials commonly found around art galleries such as wood, stone, and minerals from pigments. Their presence, which frames every visit to the museum, is made strange, wonderous, and hyper-visible in this artwork.

The second work is a sculpture in the form of a sand table. This unusually high platform creates a landscape for sculptures from Remai Modern’s collection, pieces from the artist’s personal collection, and works by Condorelli herself. Collectively, these works are set in playful dialogue with one another. The selections share territory and offer new conversations that are liberated from traditional chronological, geographic, cultural, or thematic frames.

Surprise encounters between the artworks in the museum’s care typically happen by accident as staff move things around on shelves and tables in the vaults. Condorelli offers visitors the chance to see artworks alive in a landscape and in dialogues typically kept out of view. Along the west and south walls of the gallery, there are 40 two-dimensional works in similar meandering and exploratory constellations. Ladders throughout the gallery invite a kind of up-close inspection and shifting point-of-view most commonly experienced by the museum’s registrars and preparators as they care for the collection and prepare works for exhibition.

Artists included in In the Light of What We Know are Ian Abdulla, Elizabeth Aglukka, Joseph Angatajuak, Roy Arden, Arksotingwa, Fanny Arngnakik Arnasungaaq, Kenojuak Ashevak, Mayoreak Ashoona, Pitseolak Ashoona, Shuvinai Ashoona, Lynda Benglis, Bob Boyer, Daphne Boyer, Stanley E. Brunst, Bill Burns, Victor Cicansky, Jessica Eaton, Epichuk (attributed), Joseph Fafard, Robert Flack, David Garneau, Gerald Gladstone, General Idea, Tuna Iquliq, Rosa, Arnarudluk Kanayok, A Kaunak, John Kavik, Johnnie Keeseereenak (attributed), Wanda Koop, Rosalie Ookangok Kopak, Thomas Nakturalik Mannik, Lucie Angalakte Mapsalak, Andy Miki, Joan Miró, Fred Moulding, Jermaine Napayuk, Samwillie Niviaxie, Alison Norlen, Noah Nuna, Jessie Oonark, Warren Peterson, Pablo Picasso, Parr, Donald Proch, Laure Prouvost, Sharlene Dee Stauffer, Art Sterritt, George Kopak Tayarak, Eli Tikeayak, artists unidentified, Tony Urquhart, Paul C. Wong (Bau-Xi Huang), and Russell Yuristy.

The exhibition is generously supported by the Consulate General of France in Vancouver and Laser Impressions.

Remai Modern would also like to acknowledge the contributions of the Frank & Ellen Remai Foundation, the Canada Council for the Arts, SaskCulture through the Sask Lotteries Fund, SK Arts and the City of Saskatoon.