Rebecca Ackroyd: Mirror Stage

Collateral Event of the 60th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia

Kestner Gesellschaft is pleased to present the exhibition Rebecca Ackroyd: Mirror Stage, a Collateral Event of the 60th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia.

Exhibition venue: Fondaco Marcello, Venice
Opening hours: Thursday to Sunday 12 - 6 pm

Mirror Stage presents a collection of new works by Rebecca Ackroyd (b. 1987 in Cheltenham, UK). Assembled into a dreamlike installation where the artist’s singular processes of replication and fragmentation distort our perception of reality, desire and disgust, the familiar and the uncanny, past and present coalesce into an intriguing phantasmagoria comprising large-scale paintings, drawings, cast sculptures, and ready-made objects.

In this new body of work, which expands on Rebecca Ackroyd. Period Drama , a solo exhibition presented at Kestner Gesellschaft from November 2023 to February 2024, Ackroyd explores abstract ideas such as fragmented realities, the recesses of the subconscious, and the malleability of memory, while reflecting on their representation. Titled after the Lacanian concept describing a crucial developmental stage when a child begins to differentiate between the self and others, Rebecca Ackroyd: Mirror Stage ambiguously plays with the trope of the mirror as both a reflective tool through which we insert ourselves into the surrounding world and a symbol of the division between conscious and unconscious states.

Conceived specifically for the Fondaco Marcello, a former tobacco warehouse saturated with centuries of history and labor, Rebecca Ackroyd: Mirror Stage transforms the exhibition space into a theater stage populated by childlike apparitions and feminine figures, engine wheels, body parts and charts, turning the inner workings of the mind inside out. By repeatedly casting the same figures or body parts and deconstructing everyday objects and furniture that she reassembles into new configurations, Ackroyd infuses the space with an uncanny familiarity. Within the installation, past and present connect and inner and outer selves intersect. This layering of temporalities and meanings conjures a sense of déjà vu, suspending our perception of the present into a soft, semi-hallucinatory experience. Drawing on the surreal language of dreams to create a sensory reality that straddles the imaginary and the symbolic, Rebecca Ackroyd: Mirror Stage contains cues for the viewer to interpret.

Rebecca Ackroyd: Mirror Stage is curated by Attilia Fattori Franchini and presented by Kestner Gesellschaft, Hanover, with the support of Peres Projects, which represents Rebecca Ackroyd. The exhibition was coordinated by Alexander Wilmschen, curator at the Kestner Gesellschaft.

The exhibition Rebecca Ackroyd. Period Drama was shown at the Kestner Gesellschaft from 4 Nov. 2023 - 18 Feb. 2024 and curated by Adam Budak and Alexander Wilmschen.