Opening reception: January 8, 6-8pm

Jessica Silverman Gallery is pleased to present, OPEN HOUSE, a curated exhibition featuring thirteen artists from the roster of Glasgow’s The Modern Institute. The title of the exhibition comes from a work by Scottish artist Scott Myles, who screen-printed the text ‘OPEN HOUSE’ on The Modern Institute’s Aird’s Lane gallery office door, removed it from its original frame and re-installed it on the gallery wall as part of his 2017 solo show. For the duration of the exhibition, Myles relocated his studio to the gallery, using it as site for simultaneous display of production and presentation. Like Myles’ work, OPEN HOUSE represents the portal/threshold by which works pass from the site of their creation into the wider world.

Painted directly on the inside of Jessica Silverman Gallery’s windows is a new site-specific mural by Nicolas Party, which marks the threshold into the interior of OPEN HOUSE — a space that destabilizes the distinctions between process and presentation. Richard Wright’s installation, for example, is based on the table in his own studio and lays out several paintings on paper, accompanying books and notations. The overlaps in topics and points of interest are drawn out slowly; the interconnections between the pieces allow us to have an insight into Wright’s personal blurring of research and completion.

OPEN HOUSE also contemplates the domestic, suggesting a distorted interior scene with works such as Martin Boyce’s Last Hours of Evening Light, a sculpture that prompts us to consider it as an estranged double of a fireplace. Taking inspiration from Italian architects Carlo Scarpa and Carlo Mollino, Boyce’s fireplace plays with our sense of space and draws viewers into a surreal landscape.

Extending this theme and bridging the gap between art and design, the exhibition also includes functional chairs by Italian designer Martino Gamper. These pieces rework two classic stackable chair designs – the Air Chair and the Monobloc garden chair to create strongly graphic, hybridized forms, which encourage social interaction.

Also featured is Luke Fowler’s new film Country Grammar (with Sue Tompkins). Working through a process of discussion, filming and recording together, Fowler’s film re-frames Tompkins’ 2003 performance Country Grammar, her first work performed within a gallery context. The viewer is shown glimpses of the quiet environments that inform Sue’s practice alongside her dynamic and vocally intense approach to performance.

Through these works and others, OPEN HOUSE echoes this gesture of openness and exchange, creating a space that oscillates between public and private, psychological and social and opens up a dialogue between the two galleries and their respective cities.

The Modern Institute was founded in 1997 as a production and research gallery with the aim to bring international contemporary art to Glasgow alongside promoting Glasgow based artists around the world. It currently has two exhibition spaces on the east side of the city, the first in a converted bathhouse and the second in a former glass factory. The gallery works with 45 artists and regularly curates projects internationally as well as publishing artist publications and monographs.

Jessica Silverman Gallery was founded in 2008. The gallery is known for discovering emergent artists whatever their age and bringing them to an international audience. It has a strong concept-driven roster that embraces all artistic media. This exhibition marks a continuing tradition of collaborative exhibition-making. In 2016, Mexico City-based kurimanzutto traveled their program to San Francisco for the exhibition “from here to there.” Jessica Silverman also curates “fused,” a gallery hosted by industrial designer Yves Behar in San Francisco’s Potrero Hill.