Pallas Projects - Luke van Gelderen

Luke van Gelderen—Romeo Save Me

Pallas Projects/Studios are pleased to present Luke van Gelderen—Romeo Save Me, the penultimate exhibition of our 2024 Artist-Initiated Projects programme.

'Romeo Save Me' is an installation confronting the challenges of self-perception in an era dominated by incessant streams of digital content. Appropriated and artificially generated images are employed to create an environment that resonates at the blurred intersection between celebrity culture, alienation, and violence.

Examining the unrelenting pressure to perform all aspects of the self within the hyper-competitive landscape of platforms, the work explores how emotional pain and vulnerability are commodified as a marker of authenticity. At its core is a 15-minute video piece, 'HARDCORE FENCING', examining a personal struggle with compulsive content consumption.

Spinning cars, flesh masks, and looming environmental disasters run parallel with the rise and fall of influencers, evoking endless self-consuming loops. Content appears as nodes of emotion. 'Reality' is performed and re-reformed. Memories deformed. The landscape is one of isolation, loneliness and insecurity where viewers are invited to reflect on the emerging fragmented sense of contemporary male identity.

Having been included in "this is perfect, perfect, perfect" Kunstraum Kreuzberg, Transmediale, Berlin (2024) and 'FAKE BODY', Platform Arts, Belfast (2023), "ROMEO SAVE ME" marks "HARDCORE FENCING"s first official Dublin screening. It will be simultaneously exhibited as part of 'Uncanny Valley' at Palazzo Bronzo, Genoa, Italy.

Exhibition will be opened by Sean Kissane, curator of exhibitions at the Irish Museum of Modern Art.

Curator and researcher Nora O Murchú will lead a walk-through and conversation with exhibiting artist Luke van Gelderen of his current solo exhibition Romeo Save Me at Pallas Projects/Studios.

Luke van Gelderen works across video, sculpture, and digital media, creating immersive installations that examine the performance and mediation of contemporary identities through technology. Converging celebrity culture, alienation, masculinity and violence, his work is grounded in his own experience of recurring intrusive thoughts and images amplified by the internet. Recent solo exhibitions include: 'unrecognisable (spillway)', Ormond Art Studios (2020); 'My Activity', Rua Red (2019); 'Chatroulette', K4 Galleri, Oslo (2019). Recent group exhibitions include: ‘REAL’, B63, Witten, Germany (2024); 'this is perfect, perfect, perfect, Transmediale, Berlin (2024); 'Manslows Hammer–Periodical Review 13', Pallas Projects/Studios, Dublin (2023); 'LOCKJAW', Ranelagh Arts Centre, Dublin (2023); 'FAKE BODY", Platform Arts, Belfast (2023) and 'Rendering New Realities', The Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin (2021). Recent screenings include Toxi Space, Zurich (2024), and Terrista TV, Online (2020). Luke is a co-founder of CRUX, an off-site curatorial collective. He lives and works in Dublin and is a current studio member in Temple Bar Gallery + Studios. His work is kindly supported by the Arts Council of Ireland.