ArtSlant - A Cross Secti...el, and A Tale of a Tub

2/14/2015 ArtSlant - A Cross Section of Intersections: 1646, Hotel Maria Kapel, and A Tale of a Tub

http://www.artslant.com/ams/articles/show/41980?print=1 1/8

Art Rotterdam: IntersectionsArt Rotterdam

Van Nellefabriek , Van Nelleweg 1 , 3044BC Rotterdam, Netherlands

February 5, 2015 - February 8, 2015

A Cross Section of Intersections: 1646, Hotel Maria Kapel, and A Tale of a Tub

by Manus Groenen

Rotterdam’s Van Nellefabriek—once a factory for processing coffee, tea, and tobacco—is one of the Netherlands’most impressive modernist monuments. This concrete and steel colossus, with its imposing glass façade, wasprogressive in its use of light, air, and space, and in its attention to working conditions. Art Rotterdam moved tothis UNESCO World Heritage Site and event complex in 2014. This year, the fair’s 16th edition does justice to thesite’s legacy of innovation with the introduction of Intersections: an exhibition sector devoted to non-profitspaces and artist initiatives. Leading up to Intersections’ debut, we spoke with three of its inaugural participants:1646 from The Hague, Hotel Maria Kapel from Hoorn, and A Tale of a Tub from Rotterdam.

Since its conception Art Rotterdam has grown into a fair with a compelling concept. Of course the majority of thefair consists of commercial galleries, with 70 veterans in the Main section and 25 younger ones in the New Artsection—it is an art fair after all. This core is supplemented for the third year by Projections, a separate spacewhere 12 galleries show video artworks on big screens. But Art Rotterdam does more than represent thecontemporary art world as seen through commercial glasses. It’s almost grown into an art festival of sorts, withadditional exhibitions and programming in the fair and on the Van Nellefabriek premises.

Examples are this year’s DordtYart presentation and 2014’s Concepts & Prospects, both held on the VanNellefabriek grounds during the fair. The latter was a presentation of the work by thirteen artists who hadreceived financial support by the Mondriaan Fund in the previous year. It showed more experimentation and less“sellable” art than fairs are usually prone to.

Intersections, a section for non-profits, project spaces, and artists’ initiatives, is the latest promising addition.



Here, 15 non-commercial art spaces will show a combination of video, installation, and performance art in theformer workshops of the Van Nellefabriek. According to Samuel Saelemakers, an Intersections curator, it is “aperfect way for a broad audience to get acquainted with an alternative scene with lots of room for experiment.”

Artun Alaska Arasli, How to Disappear in America (Recollection), 2015. Photo: Olivier van Breugel. Courtesy of Hotel Maria Kapel

From an independent art space point of view, Intersections has other assets. According to Nico Feragnoli andClara Pallí Monguilod, two of 1646's directors, “it also promotes exchange between organizations in both fields(the independent and the commercial one), expanding and strengthening connections that would otherwise noteasily happen.”

A Tale of a Tub’s Suzanne Wallinga notes: “The projects selected for Intersectionswill inform a discursiveprogram during the fair—Reflections, in order to stimulate dialogue between the participating spaces andamongst the invited international professionals from different backgrounds within the art world.”

Irene de Craen, the artistic director of Hotel Maria Kapel, is optimistic about the initiative too: “In my opinionthis closes the gap that sometimes seems to exist in the different corners of the art world; showing that we are allpart of the same thing, albeit with different approaches.”

So, who are these initiatives and what are they up to at Art Rotterdam?

1646



Jos de Gruyter and Harald Thys, Die Aap van Bloemfontein, 2014, Video, color, sountrack, 23 min. Courtesy 1646, the artists and galleries, Isabella Bortolozzi, Berlin, and Micheline

Szwajcer, Brussels

1646 is a project-space based in The Hague with a strong focus on artists’ practices. 1646 has worked with artists

in different phases of their careers, from young artists that have only quite recently left the academy to more

established artists. “We choose artists we find fascinating, and give them complete freedom and support to

produce new work and to present their practice in a solo exhibition,” say Nico Feragnoli and Clara Pallí

Monguilod, two of the space's directors.

The project space prefers to encourage artists to realize new projects on location and 1646’s Art Rotterdam

presentation has grown from a similar origin. They’ll be showing the videowork Die Aap van Bloemfontein by Jos

de Gruyter & Harald Thys, which was produced in collaboration with 1646 for the artists’ show there last

September. “At that time the work was still in production stage, though, so there have been some small changes

made to the work.” Besides the fact that Intersections allows a wide audience to see a “very good work” by De

Gruyter and Thys, “their generous collaboration helps stress the role independent spaces like 1646 play, in the art

context, in the production of new experimental work.”



Jos de Gruyter and Harald Thys, Die Aap van Bloemfontein, 2014, Video, color, sountrack, 23 min. Courtesy 1646, the artists and galleries, Isabella Bortolozzi, Berlin, and MichelineSzwajcer, Brussels

Since the late 1980s, Belgian artists Jos de Gruyter and Harald Thys have been working together to producephotographs, drawings, and objects which often star as props or protagonists in their expanding series of filmicworks. Their style is often quite ramshackle, amateurish and almost childish, full of humor, but at the same timequite grim. They often deal with inter-human tensions and psychological issues. Die Aap van Bloemfontein is “asingle channel video with a voiceover; those familiar with De Gruyter & Thys' work will recognize many of theelements present in early works: still close-ups, a dilated, abstracted tempo through which an eerie tensionensues.“ On 1646’s website the work is introduced by an excerpt from a 1727 pedagogical treatise on the tormentof human sin, which gives the first intimation that the work might be a bit on the dark side.

Hotel Maria Kapel



Artun Alaska Arasli, How to Disappear in America (Recollection), 2015. Photo: Olivier van Breugel. Courtesy of Hotel Maria Kapel

Hotel Maria Kapel is situated in the town of Hoorn, about a 30 minute train ride from Amsterdam. The setting isperfect for their residency program, but it can also be a bit isolated. It’s hard to compete with Amsterdam’s—orRotterdam’s— packed cultural scenes and lure visitors to Hoorn. That’s a real shame though because HMK’sprogramming in a 15th century chapel functioning as both a studio and exhibition space makes a visitworthwhile. The exposure they’ll get at Intersections is a welcome opportunity to reach a new audience.

The Art Rotterdam presentation is a first glimpse of HMK’s new artistic director Irene de Craen’s programming.According to her, Intersections acknowledges the value of non-commercial spaces. “It is precisely because we arenot a gallery or a museum that we can do what we do. The curatorial concept behind Intersections underlinesthis, and I hope the final result of all the places together will do this too.”



Artun Alaska Arasli, How to Disappear in America (Recollection), 2015. Photos: Olivier van Breugel. Courtesy of Hotel Maria Kapel

HMK will present a new work by Artun Alaska Arasli, a Turkish born artist who graduated from the GerritRietveld Academie in Amsterdam in 2011. His installation for Intersections,

...links the idea of the hidden to the dialectics of the house as an (occasionally) unsafe place. Theworks combined in the presentation are indirectly connected to the public spectacle of SharonTate’s murder in 1969, and through this event relate to the general concept of home invasion andrandom acts of violence. Furthermore, it refers to the newly published book Recollection byDebra Tate, Sharon Tate's sister, which is about things other than Tate's murder, and representsan effort to create a moment that vainly tries to efface a tragedy that is ineffaceable.

For de Craen, this sense of the home as an unsafe place is also a critical nod to the art fair setting. “Art fairs arereally very artificial, even unheimlich at times. So to address feelings of safety, of hiding or wanting to disappearin this context makes sense to me.” HMK employees are even hidden inside of the installation themselves. “Itboth critiques the whole fair business as well as make fun of us a bit. These fairs can be quite the carnival, so thesubtle mocking element helps to keep us grounded.”

A Tale of a Tub



David Helbich, KEINEMUSIK: Ohrstücke / NOMUSIC: earpieces, Compositions for ears, 2010-ongoing.Image: conducted version at Kunsthalle for the Darmstadt Summer Course

2014 ©IMD, Daniel Pufe

Rotterdam’s A Tale of a Tub is, in fact, a Van Nellefabriek neighbor. The young organization opened in Augustlast year and is situated in a former bathhouse, designed by a member of the Brinkman family, one of the VanNellefabriek’s architects—a connection they wish to evoke in their show at Art Rotterdam. A Tale of a Tub aims topresent and advance contemporary fine art practices, emphasizing autonomy, dialogue, and exchange. “Ideas,questions, discussion, and presentations are of equal importance.”

They also stress the importance of dialogue and their addition to Intersections, titled Modern Elevations, shouldform an incentive for discussion. They’re presenting two artists: Nicoline Timmer and David Helbich. Both workwith choreography and sound composition in relation to ethics, space, and experience. Suzanne Wallinga, one ofthe founding curators notes: “On the one hand, Modern Elevations literally investigates the spatial boundaries ofthe art fair, highlighting the architectural features whilst bringing forward the acoustic qualities of the Van NelleFactory.”

German artist David Helbich composes, makes installations, organizes experimental city walks, and photographsabsurd scenes in daily life, often inviting visitor participation. He presents a “composition for ears,” saysWallinga, “which finds its form depending on the occasion. It consists of a set of instructions that invites thevisitors to perform several actions at specific locations on the outside walls of the factory. Every day, Helbichgives a conducted tour as well, in which the audience becomes the orchestra.”

Nicoline Timmer has been working with the structure of the opera in order to create a world that is able togenerate its own coherence. She has a thing for beginnings: “the moment when movements are on the verge of



Spotlight onDordtYart, anArts OrganizationWhere Synergy Isthe Gospel Group Exhibition 2/4/15

becoming a dance, sentences are about to be sung, questions are asked without being solidified in philosophy.

The moment when a language, a genre, a symbol emerges for the first time.” At Intersections Timmer continues

her opera series. According to Wallinga, “the artist traced the original manuscript of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s

‘Lecture on Ethics’ (1929). His personal remarks served as material for a visual motif and formed the starting

point for a constellation of drawings, tapestries, two ‘polyphonic’ vases and a photo.”

—Manus Groenen

(Image at top: Nicoline Timmer, Making waves instead #3 (woven blanket), 2013. Photo: Gert Jan van Rooij. Courtesy of the artist and A Tale of a Tub)

Posted by Manus Groenen on 2/5 | tags: non-profit artist spaces artist initiatives Art Rotterdam Week art rotterdam 2015

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