MACE are showing new works that merge and interplay with each other to create a direct and unique visual dialogue and collaboration between the two artists. This singular exhibition marks the first time Gordon and Rehberger have approached their practice in this manner. As well as forming an aesthetic conversation, the works can also be considered a direct comment upon each other’s practice, creating a documentation of their personal and artistic relationship.
The exhibition title, After the After, considers Ibiza’s status as an iconic place of hedonism, parties and decadence while examining the ‘after-point’ that occurs when this ultimately comes to an end, a time of emptiness and paranoia when one should not be left alone. The works in the exhibition range in media including film, painting, and sculpture and are situated both within the confines of the museum and displayed outside in the surrounding city environment.
At the centre of After the After is a work comprising two parts based on the same section of film of two men engaging in sexual intercourse. Rehberger has constructed a large 5m x 5m ‘tile painting’ depicting the upper half of the men, their faces and torsos, displayed on the terrace wall on the exterior of the museum. On viewing the tile painting close-up the image is totally abstract - totally pixelated from the individual tiles - only when viewed from a distance or through a smartphone screen does the image become distinct and concrete. This optical illusion forges a physical and ultimately emotional distance from the viewer to the intimate moment depicted. In his response, Gordon focuses on the lower half of the men via a film of their moving legs. The film is projected onto a wall inside the museum that can also be viewed from outside alongside Rehberger’s monumental tile painting.
In the interior space of the museum, Gordon and Rehberger present directly collaborative sculptures and film works, many of which suggest feelings of abandonment and neglect, in addition to portraits in various media the two artists have created of one another. Externally, a billboard, visible en route from the airport to MACE, that normally advertises Cocoon Club, one of the largest parties on the island, will be altered by the artists using spray paint and illuminated letters to announce instead their exhibition. Another text work depicts the words ‘Something Else is Possible’ and will be displayed on a building in the old city that can also be clearly viewed from the balcony of MACE, playing with and questioning the physical definitions of the exhibition.
