Games at Gallery Libby Sellers
4 July - 18 August '12
London
To coincide with the 2012 Olympics, Gallery Libby Sellers presents a group show themed around the notion of games.
The presentation takes as its inspiration an exhibition hosted by the Julien Levy Gallery in New York, 1944, during which Levy, Max Ernst and Marcel Duchamp invited a veritable “who's who” of modernist artists to contribute chess sets, art works and furniture to the exhibition. A special score by John Cage was also prepared and performed during the show. “The Imagery of Chess” has served as inspiration to many artists and designers ever since.
The exhibition sees chess sets, games and other pieces by aberrant architecture + Benchmark with the American Hardwood Export Council, Fabien Cappello, Studio Frith, Alexander Gelman, Simon Hasan, Florian Hauswirth, James Irvine, Paul Kelley, Julia Lohmann and Rolf Sachs (amongst others) paying homage to both the 1944 exhibition and the ‘royal game’ of chess.
By quirk of fate, the timing of the London show falls almost forty years to the day of the infamous 1972 Fischer v. Spassky World Chess Championship from which Fischer emerged the first American to be officially titled winner since 1888 and thereby ending 24 years of Soviet domination of the World Championship. It will also coincide with the British Chess Championships and is the gallery’s wry contribution to the Olympics as a more lateral take on the notion of “Games”.
Games at Gallery Libby Sellers
Games at Gallery Libby Sellers
Games at Gallery Libby Sellers
Rolf Sachs, Weighing up the Competition chess set, 2012
Log Chess Set, Peter Marigold, 2012
JULIA LOHMANN & GERO GRUNDMANN Tidal Ossuary Chess Set, 2012
Games at Gallery Libby Sellers
