THE SECESSION GALLERY
Exhibition design and graphics for Emily Roysdon’s solo exhibition “Comedy of Margin Theatre” at the Secession in Vienna.
Background
Emily Roysdon (1977) is a New York and Stockholm-based artist and writer, working with with a variety of practices such as performance, photographic installations, text and video. Roysdon contacted Summer Studio to design a floor piece interpreting vocabulary from her text “Uncounted”, for her solo exhibition at the Secession Gallery in Vienna in 2015.
Floor piece 1
The floor piece, the exhibition’s largest component at 83 square meters, consists of two distinct parts. The first part combines an image of exaggerated legs, text and hand written notes that refer to the writings of Virginia Woolf, Charlie Parker, Richard Foreman, and Jack Smith.
Logotype
The symbol O—O (“circle line circle”) stands in for Roysdon’s idea “how not to be the thing itself,” which is discussed in Uncounted and reflects her ethics of collaboration and improvisation. The floor design serves as a dramaturgical backdrop and setting for live actions.
Floor piece 2
The second part is a litany of text that may be read in either direction and introduces key terms for a discourse on theater, marginality, and improvisation. Visible in both floor pieces is the logotype - a sign that might belong to a system of choreographic notation.
Photos by Iris Ranzinger courtesy of Secession.