Luke van Gelderen

info

HARDCORE FENCING, 2024
single channel video, 15:07min.








‘HARDCORE FENCING’ (2024) is a video work 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 ‘HARDCORE FENCING’ examines 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.

Exhibited/Screened:

2025        I DON'T FEEL ANYTHING, TRIBECA GALLERY, New York, USA (online)
2025        I’m (Un)real Boy, PAF – Festival of Film Animation and Contemporary Art, Olomouc, CZ
2025        The Burden of the Image, The Hugh Lane Gallery (screening)
2025        Goldsmiths University of London (screening)
2025        Staying with the Trouble, Irish Museum of Modern Art (group)
2025        Planned Obsolescence, SEAGER, London (group)
2024        Romeo Save Me, Pallas Projects/Studios, Dublin (solo)
2024        Uncanny Valley, Palazzo Bronzo, Genova (group)
2024        Kasseler Dokfest, Kassel (screening)
2024        Digital Art Zurich, Kunsthaus Zürich, Switzerland (screening)
2024        UNTHINKABLE, Hull, UK (screening)
2024        Toxi Space, Zürich, Switzerland (screening)
2024        this is perfect, perfect, perfect, Transmediale, Berlin (group)
2024        FAKE BODY, Platform Arts Belfast (duo)