wish upon a shooting star
exhibition (together with diana mikane as gel office)
exhibited at living room (athens, greece)



Wish Upon a Shooting Star derives from situated city megaproject showrooms. Coming from Riga, another periphery of the European Union, and sharing the same time zone with Athens,  the artist duo gel office fabricates an upcoming gentrified poodle invasion in the middle of mixed-use urban development potentialities. While still existing through rendered nightmares without windows, these outlines simulate an archipelago of sleek urban presences, connected through the imaginary of abstraction. Entering the regeneration genre of fictional spaces, gel office sets up implicit frictions. It is the same place with gasping promises, whether it’s Athens, Dubai, or Riga – the Dubai of Europe. Is there a way out?

Departing from René Boer’s text Smooth City, which critiques the evolution of urban development towards what he describes as ‘smoothness’ – a trend marked by polished, predictable, and homogenous urban spaces – the artists reinterpret this expression as an action. In this instance, Living Room becomes a portal of the uncanny date, hiding under the hope and promise of a shooting star. The sculptural assemblage constructs a hostile scenography of intertwined object ontologies. In the space, the artists are working with smoothly embedded forms and features, and are looking for ways how to redirect, dislocate, and mould them into a cosmos, where rendered realities meet in folds and glitches, inviting curves and cuts that set a blind date for both, perfect project image, and ghosts and monsters it might be hiding.

Curatorial assistance: Auðunn Kvaran, Nikoletta Georgakopoulou
Production assistance: Katariin Mudist, Auðunn Kvaran
Graphic design: Auðunn Kvaran
Photo documentation: Frank Holbein 
Financial support: Culture Moves Europe
On view:  27/11/24 - 05/01/25

documentation pdf available upon request