Exhibition Guide September 2016
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Visitors guide Fall 2016 Program September 2016 — January 2017 Para | Fictions Lucy Skaer — One Remove 15 July — 2 October 2016 Mark Geffriaud — two thousand fifteen 14 October 2016 — 15 January 2017 GROUND FLOOR In the Belly of the Whale 9 September — 31 December 2016 SECOND FLOOR WDW25+ Kasper Bosmans — Decorations 9 September — 31 December 2016 Fabian Bechtle and Adriana Ramić — Rome Was Built For A Day 10 November — 31 December 2016 THIRD FLOOR Director’s Welcome In an age of constant reformations, be they 10,000 Years of Nordic Folk Art, a project part aesthetic, political, ecological, and even of his Scandinavian Institute for Comparative spiritual, what is the responsibility of art Vandalism, which he founded as an inter- institutions? As such, can artists become disciplinary institute with the aim of ‘vandal- active co-creators of institutions, their politics, izing’ art history. Curated by Samuel and representations? This is a question both Saelemakers, Bosmans’ installation is part of artists and institutions such as ours must con- a year-long series of artistic and curatorial tinuously ask themselves. This Fall, we are approaches Witte de With has commissioned presenting a program exclusively proposed by as to not only engage with canonical moments our curatorial team as to proactively trigger in our own history, but also to provide a plat- dialogue through which to reflect upon the form for previously unacknowledged cultural projected role of artworks today as well as their histories and figures whose presentation would relevancy and links to the context in which loop back into and supplement our archive. they are conceived and presented. In November, we will also see interventions by artists Adriana Ramić and Fabian Bechtle, In the Belly of the Whale on our second floor both proposing access to the institution’s takes the story of Jonah and the whale as its inner life, as organized by Marie Egger, our departure point so as to investigate how art Curatorial Fellow 2016. works have been transformed through context, display, and inscription. With its investiga- All these projects hopefully will act as a hum- tions anchored through the work of three emi- ble reminder how artists are the ultimate nent scientists — physicist and meteorologist visionaries of (art) histories as well as their Charles Thomson Rees Wilson, psychologist immediate cultural and political contexts. Paul Ekman, and neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot — the exhibition, curated by Adam And last but not least, on our ground floor, Witte Kleinman and Natasha Hoare, positions con- de With continues its program of solo projects, temporary art works as phenomena that are under the rubric of Para | Fictions, in which able to trace shifts in social and political realities, Lucy Skaer instinctively and sensually responds and in turn shape them. to The Waves, one of Virginia Woolf’s most experimental novels, to be followed by a com- On our third floor, Witte de With continues to mission by Mark Geffriaud, whose departure confront its collection of traces from past points include narrative elements from Samuel decades of exhibition-making. Kasper Bosmans Beckett’s short novel Company. is invited to plunge and shred through Witte de With’s archives as to populate it with what With best wishes for the Fall! was never considered; in fact by looping in radical artist Asger Jorn’s photographic archive Defne Ayas Para | Fictions GROUND FLOOR If both art and literature constitute forms of Lucy Skaer thought, what is generated or lost in slippages, One Remove translations, and activations between the two? 15 July – 2 October 2016 Are their dividing lines arbitrary or highly The Waves (1931) by Virginia Woolf trembles on dissoluble? How do both forms enfold and the borderline of ‘failing’ as a novel, whilst unfold across the exhibition space? What simultaneously obstinately insisting on its own relates making to writing, viewing to reading? textuality. In his 1931 review of The Waves one critic notes of Woolf, “In creating new forms, In January this year Witte de With launched she has found new materials to fit them.” Skaer Para | Fictions, a cycle of sustained investi- follows this thread in sculptural terms, using gations on its ground floor, which take these the carte blanche of fiction. Inlaid antique furni- questions as their focus through the practice ture, customised modernist tables and woven of six artists; Calla Henkel & Max Pitegoff, Berber carpets form a scene which is also Mark Geffriaud, Laure Prouvost, Oscar Santillan, a blockade or refusal of the exhibition space. and Lucy Skaer. Each project on display presents a different artistic methodology that traces each artist’s visual interests and literary Mark Geffriaud underpinnings to seek the viability of re- two thousand fifteen positioning ‘reference’ as ‘form’, ‘translation’ 14 October 2016 – 15 January 2017 as ‘co-authorship’. Geffriaud presents new work departing from the narrative elements deployed by Samuel The Para | Fictions series has been provoked Beckett in his short novel Company (1979). by the particular correspondences between Geffriaud uses projections, a voice-over and a literature and visual arts in contemporary revolving door to test and evoke the struc- culture; a landscape made up of disparate yet tural and durational characteristics of cinema relatable topographies of influence branching and literature. into fiction as a research methodology and theoretical discourse around the fictional nature of the contemporary itself. UPCOMING Laure Prouvost 27 January – 9 April 2017 Rotterdam Cultural Histories #9 Manifesta 1 Revisited FIRST FLOOR Rotterdam Cultural Histories #9 revolves around outside their own countries for the first time Manifesta 1, the travelling European biennale in their career. In this archival presentation, that had its very first edition in Rotterdam from next to contributions by artists like Maria June to August 1996. Through never before Eichhorn (Germany), Ayşe Erkmen (Turkey), shown archival and video material, this edition Vadim Fishkin (Russia), IRWIN (Slovenia), and of Rotterdam Cultural Histories aims to shed Huang Yong Ping (France/China), special some light on the coming about of the first attention is given to the work of Russian artist Manifesta Biennale and the artworks shown. Oleg Kulik and NEsTWORK, a Rotterdam based artist initiative. The biennale was an initiative by founding direc- tor Hedwig Fijen and Joop van Caldenborgh During Manifesta 1, Oleg Kulik performed (first chair of Manifesta Foundation), aiming to Pavlov’s Dog , now known as a key piece in create a format for a travelling art manifesta- his œuvre. For weeks Kulik took on the iden- tion based in local institutes in different cities tity of a dog, living 24 hours a day at V2_ every two years. Manifesta 1 was held in 16 art Institute for the Unstable Media while taking institutions and 36 public spaces in Rotterdam — intelligence and physical tests in a ‘labora- including Villa Alckmaer (the predecessor of tory’. NEsTWORK was an initiative by artist TENT), Witte de With Center for Contem- Jeanne van Heeswijk, set to give Manifesta porary Art, and V2_ — and was one of the first roots in the local art community. This diverse international biennales to advocate cooperation group of Rotterdam based artists created with local institutions and artists on such a eighty-seven daily programs with activities, large scale. Another remarkable part of performances, concerts, films, lectures and Manifesta 1 was the selection of not one, but debates at several locations in the city. five curators: Katalyn Neray (Hungary), Rosa Martinez (Spain), Viktor Misiano (Russia), Rotterdam Cultural Histories is a collaborative Hans-Ulrich Obrist (Switzerland), and Andrew project between TENT and Witte de With Renton (United Kingdom). Center for Contemporary Art that explores our common roots in Rotterdam and articulates The first edition of Manifesta focused on meeting points between both of our programs. subjects related to contemporary Europe, such Rotterdam Cultural Histories is conceived by as migration, translation and communication, Defne Ayas (Director of Witte de With) and community and politics. All the works dis- Mariette Dölle (former Artistic Director, TENT). played at Manifesta 1 were specially made for this edition and many of the participating artists, now world-renown, where exhibiting Exhibition Floor Plan 4 3 CORRIDOR CORRIDOR 6 5 1 2 In the Belly of the Whale SECOND FLOOR Drawing from the biblical story of Jonah and particularly through his use of photographic the Whale — in which the prophet’s resolve and taxonomies as a form of evidence. His findings message is galvanized whilst he meditates underpin contemporary facial recognition within the dark body of the great beast that techniques and research into micro-histories has swallowed him whole — this group exhibi- of photography that undermine the medium’s tion brings together artworks and objects to claim to objectivity. trace various transformations of meaning, reception, and use over time. In the Belly of Like fragments or links in a larger system, the the Whale plays content against its framing works collected here offer perspectives with to question both how an artifact references a which to bounce aesthetic concerns against given historical moment and how different the political environment in which they were modes and moments of display affect signifi- birthed or later received. Eschewing any neat cation. Or, to present these questions