calendario eventi  :: 

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15/10/2011

Two exhibitions

Stedelijk Museum Schiedam, Schiedam

Jeroen Eisinga
Springtime

From 16 October 2011 until 26 February 2012, the Stedelijk Museum Schiedam will present Springtime, the solo exhibition of work of Jeroen Eisinga. The name Springtime (2010/2011) previously served as the title of Eisinga’s latest film performance, featuring the artist himself in the leading role. The Museum is particularly proud to present this solo exhibition, because in the past few years Eisinga’s work has only been on display in small-scale exhibitions. After a laurelled start of his career in the Netherlands, with purchases by and presentations in several major museums, Eisinga completed a continuation course at The American Film Institute in Los Angeles in the past decade, during which he was represented in several group exhibitions, both at home and abroad. However, now is the first time that the increasing intensity of Eisinga’s oeuvre is put forward on a museological level. In this exhibition, early examples of his work such as 40-44-PG and Night Porter (both from 1993) or Het belangrijkste moment van mijn leven (1995) (The most important moment of my life) are combined with work of a later date, among which are Sehnsucht (2002) and the recently completed Springtime.
Jeroen Eisinga (Delft, 1966) is a romantic in present-day art, an equilibrist who measures his powers against a Higher Power. His oeuvre is like a man-to-man fight, a constantly changing battle with himself. In these duels Eisinga does not shrink from tempting fate as well. Although he fearlessly stages and performs his personal rituals, his preparations take place beyond the spotlights, with the utmost concentration required. The version that eventually emerges is then presented to the public.
The title of Eisinga’s early film 40-44-PG is derived from the license plate of a red Volkswagen Beetle, rudderlessly riding in circles on a parking lot while the artist, blindfolded, walks in circles in the opposite direction. The outcome of this risky choreography is just as unpredictable as it is unknown. On the continuous, soft hum of the Vokswagen’s engine the tension is built up gradually, slowly creeping up on the viewer’s mood.
Eisinga is not afraid to set the stakes high, as the title of the opening piece of the exhibition already suggests: Het belangrijkste moment van mijn leven (The most important moment of my life). In this work, humour and tragedy compete for supremacy. The “most important moment” is destined to slip away from the artist, but his self-imposed plight to pursue it, even share it with us, reveals an ode to human aspiration, if not to art itself. To the seriousness of this discipline which extends to the meaning of life.
In his work Eisinga incorporates high-strung expectation as well as its counterpart: failure. In this respect he may be regarded as a soulmate of Samuel Beckett, the playwright, who wrote: No matter. Try Again. Fail Again. Fail Better. In Eisinga’s performances we encounter the fool and the genius, who go hand in hand, are two-in-one; they are the artist himself, who opts for the beauty of danger rather than settling for mediocrity and never gives up his attempts to rise above himself, above gravity, above the limitations and the emptiness of life.

In Springtime we see a full frontal shot of Eisinga sitting at a table, motionless, in front of a wall covered with bees. In a slowly growing swarm the bees cover the artist’s bare upper body, his shaved head and, finally, his face. Body and bees seem to become one, pulsating organism. Not only does the ritual make the public shiver, it even evokes a literally breath-taking effect with the viewer.
Springtime is a variation on the ordeal called bee bearding which is incidentally held among bee-keepers, when they allow themselves to be covered by their honeybees. With Springtime Eisinga, a layman in the domain of bee-keeping, made a total sublimation of this bee-keepers’ ritual.
The quest that Eisinga actively undertakes in Het belangrijkste moment van mijn leven (The most important moment of my life), across fields, waterways and roads, has culminated here in a test of his own mental power, endurance and physical resilience in an overwhelming world.

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Unisono 24. Nina Yuen
Lucid Dreaming

From 16 October 2011 until 26 February 2012, the Stedelijk Museum Schiedam will present the first museum solo exhibition in the Netherlands of the work of the artist Nina Yuen. Yuen (Hawaï, 1981) followed an art study at Harvard University, after which she continued her education at the Rijksakademie (National Academy of Visual Art) in Amsterdam. The exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum Schiedam will comprise a spatial installation around four film performances, combined with portraits taken from those films from 2007 to 2011. The exhibition will include a monumental display of Yuen’s latest work, Juanita (2010).
In her films, Nina Yuen shows an inner world, a dreamy world in which thoughts and feelings stream onward, like words in a book or like waves in an ocean. At the same time, Yuen’s inner world is an outer world. Culture and nature intersect in a hypnotizing way. The wind, the leaves on the trees, the water and the animals are equivalent to language and human imagination. Constantly the voice of the artist herself can be heard as a voice-over, reading fragments from diaries and letters, repeating fragments of conversations. Personal stories are followed by quotations from poets such as Rimbaud.
Yuen also quotes Carlos Castaneda, who made a study of supernatural phenomena and near-death experiences, longing for lucid dreaming: an elevated level of perception. Although Yuen does not specifically use this term, that is precisely what she entices us to do: to dream while we are aware that we are dreaming. In the Netherlands, author and psychiatrist Frederik van Eeden was an advocate of ‘lucid dreaming’: dreaming, yet with a clear, alert mind. It is hard to find a more adequate description of Yuen’s enchanting mixture of inner and outer worlds, culture and nature, text and image.

In all of Yuen’s films, present and past are strongly interconnected. In Rimbaud (2007), a fast role play featuring the French Symbolists Mallarmé, Rimbaud and Valéry, Yuen rapidly changes roles, using dishes as hats and a painted-on moustache. Writers, artists and historical heroes or heroines, such as Jeanne d’Arc (Joan, 2009) meet one another as kindred spirits across the continents and through the centuries.

In the film David (2010), the David of the title, who remains unseen, is summoned by his mistress, played by Yuen. She performs girlish rituals in which love and heartache, memories and illusions, superstition and an unbridled sense of beauty are the primary ingredients. To recapture her lover, she utters incantations. Spell to bring a loved one back: on your underwear, paint the underwear that you will be wearing the day that he comes back, whereupon she paints elegant lingerie on her tights with sky-blue glitter nail varnish. In this way, every voodoo variant is implemented before our eyes. Decorated apples, feathers and flames are also deployed.

Juanita (2010) goes considerably further. In this film, Death stalks around, as a cat (played by Yuen), but also via letters to an uncle who died young, memories of a (grand) mother, and in visions of future farewells. Yuen appropriates her own other’s biography in the form of the deceased domestic pet, and during a trip to the coast where her mother hoped to reside after her death. Yuen explores the area with a melancholy that is tangible in the landscape and which multiplies in the glimmering of the sun on the ocean.

Image: Jeroen Eisinga, Springtime, 2010-2011, still from 35 mm film converted to HD video. Courtesy of the artist and Zic Zerp art gallery, Rotterdam

Press contact:
Henny van Leeuwen Tel: + 31 (0)10 2463662 or +31 (0)6 10423487 E-mail: henny.van.leeuwen@stedelijkmuseumschiedam.nl
Lobke Broos Tel: + 31 (0)10 2463657 or +31 (0)6 10960243 E-mail: lobke.broos@stedelijkmuseumschiedam.nl

Stedelijk Museum Schiedam
Hoogstraat 112 3111 HL Schiedam The Netherlands
Opening hours
Tuesday to Sunday 10.00 – 17.00 h.
Closed on Mondays, Christmas day and New Year’s day
Admission
€ 7.50 per adult
€ 3.75 discount for 65+card holders (OAP) and children 4-12 years old
Free for children up to 4 years old

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