Exit Wall - the sky is the limit.

This exhibition presented the first version of the ongoing project Exit-Wall. In this initial version, the focus of the intervention is the limit between the gallery space and the street outside. By covering the gallery window with hundreds of partially transparent exit-sign stickers (which also had been sent out as invitation cards) the access to the inside space is conditioned. A chromed satellite dish - with a CCTV camera replacing the usual LNB head - captures the sky and the images are displayed inside the gallery. Wordplay and “visionplay” revolve around the “wall of exits”. The interior exhibits itself in the exterior space and the exterior imposes itself in the interior…
In the first instance, the project constitutes a visual pun based on the contradiction between the linguistic meaning of its constituting parts (“exit”) and the barrier it poses in physical reality.
On a more theoretical level, the project relates strongly to the artists’ continuous research about the nature of the interface. In particular, their work revolves around the inherent ambiguity of the interface, providing both access to new territories and simultaneously separating us from other parts of reality. Like an interface, the wall “promises” an exit, an access to the other side but at the same time constitutes a physical separation.
Essentially, this ambiguity is in fact not a particularity of the “Exit-Wall” but ultimately applies to every wall. While a wall limits a space it always also implies a space behind the wall, the other side so to speak. According to its particular function, context and the perspective (in its widest sense) of the viewer every wall can assume different meanings simultaneously, revolving around notions like protection, property, wealth, defence, exclusion, oppression, liberation, separation, hope, despair, suffering, salvation, war, peace, etc.
The actual particularity of the “exit-wall” is that it does not assume a specific meaning in itself but due to its evident ambivalence is a vehicle to emphasize the intrinsic ambiguity of a real wall. The idea is therefore to present Exit-Wall in diverse locations and contexts, with the aim to amplify the multitude of (contradictory) stories the walls of different sites might have to tell.