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'Old School New Body' by Toby Christian at Celine, Glasgow

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Celine is proud to present Old School New Body, a new solo exhibition by Toby Christian.

A series of paper sculptures populates the main gallery space. The knotted, skeletal figures are constituted of free daily newspapers collected by the artist while travelling around London in the months prior to the exhibition. Remodelling the knotted papers that mapped the walls of his previous exhibition The News, the sculptures are titled to propose temporary instances of creativity (maker), packaging (shrinker), headlining (streamer), celebration (nicotine pompom) and sustenance (chip poker). Braced by a spontaneous armature of bamboo skewers, bent steel clips and sealant, these jagged networks abridge each article into clusters of words and splashes of colour.

08:05, a single marble sculpture attached to the wall, is a site for a past performance. Immediately prior to the opening of Old School New Body, the work was warmed by continuous hand contact for the duration of a proper lunch break, after which it cools to the local ambient temperature. This traditional sculptural material, pristine and porous, is waxed to shield it from the secretions of active Eccrine glands. The sculpture equivocally draws from the formal languages of modern British sculpture and contemporary technological hardware.

Across the hallway, the looped video Kiosk shows a lone bee struggling through a scorched thyme plant, to shed a surplus of pollen grain covering its body. As a recurrent character from the first chapter of Christian’s recent book Collar, this prime pollinator is demonstrative of the reciprocal relationship between his writing and making. The work was filmed out of the window of where he was living at that time.

Underfoot, temporary plastic sheeting hides the gallery’s various floor finishes. This hardwearing protection, usually laid during renovation works, alludes to a specifically transformative mode of labour in the domestic setting of the gallery. The windows here are covered too with privacy film, reflecting a hazy, bubbling image of the works in the exhibition, echoing the unique, oblique narrative sensibility which defines his practice.

6.5.19 — 11.5.19

Celine

'ABSINTHE', Group Show Curated by PLAGUE at Smena, Kazan

'Pupila' by Elizabeth Burmann Littin at Two seven two gallery, Toronto

'Auxiliary Lights' by Kai Philip Trausenegger at Bildraum 07, Vienna

'Inferno' by Matthew Tully Dugan at Lomex, New York

'Зamok', Off-Site Group Project at dentistry Dr. Blumkin, Moscow

'Dog, No Leash', Group Show at Spazio Orr, Brescia

'Syllables in Heart' by Thomas Bremerstent at Salgshallen, Oslo

'Out-of-place artifact', Off-Site Project by Artem Briukhov in Birsk Fortress, Bi

'Gardening' by Daniel Drabek at Toni Areal, Zurich

'HALF TRUTHS', Group Show at Hackney Road, E2 8ET, London

'Unknown Unknowns' by Christian Roncea at West End, The Hague

'Thinking About Things That Are Thinking' by Nicolás Lamas at Meessen De Clercq,

‘Funny / Sad’, Group Show by Ian Bruner, Don Elektro & Halo, curated by Rhizome P

'Don’t Die', Group Show at No Gallery, New York

'Almost Begin' by Bronson Smillie at Afternoon Projects, Vancouver

'I'll Carry Your Heart's Gray Wing with a Trembling Hand to My Old Age', Group Sh

'hapy like a fly' by Clément Courgeon at Colette Mariana, Barcelona

'Fear of the Dark' by Jack Evans at Soup, London

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