Image: Belmacz, London
Belmacz in London has announced 'Total Theatre ESP', a group exhibition running from 11 October to 20 December 2024, with an opening reception on 10 October. The project is described by the gallery as a collective embodiment of Edward Gordon Craig, the British theatre theorist, director, illustrator and scenic designer whose ideas continue to resonate across performance, design and visual art. The exhibition brings together Bora Baboçi, Toby Christian, Michael Kleine, Cosima zu Knyphausen, Camilla Løw, Agata Madejska, Rechonski and Tereza Zelenková.
According to the exhibition text on Belmacz’s website, 'Total Theatre ESP' begins from Craig’s rejection of realist theatre and his preference for simple, severe theatrical expression. The gallery frames the show as a “Craigische vorstellung,” an act of Craigian imagination, and uses Craig’s own language about theatre’s duty to inspire “more calmness and more wisdom in mankind by the inspiration exhaling from its beauty.” The exhibition is positioned as a response to that modernist outlook rather than as a narrative-driven theme.
The gallery says the show unfolds through sculpture, photography and works on and from paper, with each artist working through the formal qualities of their medium. Belmacz characterises the installation dramaturgically as a diagonal stage and a three-dimensional setting for extrasensory perception. Within that structure, Michael Kleine’s flying candle lights and Camilla Løw’s porous screen establish an “in-ordinary environment,” while photographic, painted, penned and projected works by Tereza Zelenková, Agata Madejska, Cosima zu Knyphausen and Rechonski appear as what the gallery describes as non-diegetic soliloquies.
The exhibition text also emphasises how the participating artists occupy the space between representation and abstraction. Bora Baboçi and Toby Christian are presented as contributing “ghostly form” and material traces that point to narrative without fully resolving into it. In Belmacz’s framing, the show turns Craig’s search for “Higher Forms of Beauty” into a contemporary encounter with different artistic procedures rather than a single storyline or theatrical scenario.
Belmacz’s online presentation names the venue as its address at 45 Davies Street in London, and the exhibition is listed in the gallery’s 2024 archive. The project also appears in the gallery’s email announcement under the title 'Total Theatre ESP', which restates the dates and notes the opening reception on Thursday 10 October, 5–8pm. The source materials do not indicate any venue beyond Belmacz.
Selected works shown on the exhibition page include Camilla Løw’s 'The City of Systems' (2024), Michael Kleine’s 'Leuchter' (2017), Toby Christian’s 'Spoke Pillars Clung' (2024), Bora Baboçi’s 'Banquo in the Fiest' (2024), Agata Madejska’s 'Mistakes Were Made' (2018), Rechonski’s 'A Staged Photograph (Gobo)' (2024), and Tereza Zelenková’s 'Skull' (2020) and 'Tripod, Meridian Hall, Prague' (2016).
