Luke Van Gelderen—Romeo Save Me

Pallas Projects/Studios are pleased to announce Luke Van Gelderen—Romeo Save Me, the seventh 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.