Bas Jan Ader
dal 21/5/2003 al 28/6/2003
Segnalato da
21/5/2003
Bas Jan Ader
Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris
Installations  Photographies. The artist experiments the relationship between his body and his presence modifying a chosen environment. He carefully documents his actions under the final form of sophisticatedly composed films and photographs, texts, publications. To the characteristics that mark the works of his conceptual contemporaries, Bas Jan Ader adds a very personal element: sober emotion.
Installations  Photographies
Born in Winschoten, the Netherlands in 1942, Bas Jan Ader studies art at
the Dutch Instituut voor Kunstnijveheidsonderwijs. After several
adventureous journeys at sea, an eleven-months journey on board of a cargo,
that set sail from Morocco brings him to Los Angeles, where he settles in
1963. In LA, he studies philosophy, and attends the academy of art. From
that moment on, Ader becomes very involved in the Californian art scene. He
takes part in seminars at CalArts and at Otis College. He becomes a
permanent member of the UC Irvine Art Faculty.
In 1975, Bas Jan Ader disappears during a performance : In Search of the
Miraculous II, a multi-part work. From Cape Cod (USA), he attempted to cross
the Atlantic in a small sailing boat He was meant to reach Land's End (GB)
after a three month's journey. Upon his arrival in Holland, an exhibition,
planned at the Groninger Museum, would have presented the works and
documentations made during this crossing.
During the seventies, numerous West Coast artists are interested in the
relationship between art and life, between performance and photography, as
well as in the difference between the art object and the documentation of an
action. Bas Jan Ader knows and appreciates the conceptual work of his
contemporaries  Ed Ruscha, Gordon Matta-Clark, Dan Graham, Robert Smithson,
Chris Burden, John Baldessari, as well as Ger Van Elk. Like several of these
artists, he experiments the relationship between his body and his presence
modifying a chosen environment. He carefully documents his actions under the
final form of sophisticatedly composed films and photographs, texts,
publications.
To the characteristics that mark the works of his conceptual contemporaries,
Bas Jan Ader adds a very personal element : sober emotion.
' Ader gestures toward the mortal risk and failure inherent in any search
for the miraculous or experience of the sublime.' (Bruce Hainley in Legend
of the Fall, Artforum, March 1999).
Throughout his work, BJA regularly reminds of his origins. Many of his
pieces refer to, or suggest a return to The Netherlands. Thus, for instance
in The Artist as Consumer of Extreme Comfort  the only work realized
between 1967 and 1969 (with the exception of the magazine Landslide), the
photographic self-'mise en scène' is marked by an ambivalent gravity. In
this composition, Ader evokes a portrait of the melancholic artist  an
allusion to Romanticism  considered as totally obsolete at the end of the
sixties.
His extreme engagement in the refusal of established codes, his use of the
journey as a form of art, continue inspiring and influencing successive
generations of artists.
The Galerie Chantal Crousel is proud to present this first gallery
exhibition of Bas Jan Ader in France.
FALL - DISTANCIATION - LOSS
Image:
Bas Jan Ader
'Toughts unsaid, then forgotten'
1973, installation view
GALERIE CHANTAL CROUSEL
40 RUE QUINCAMPOIX - 75004 PARIS - T. 33 1 42 77 38 87 - F. 33 1 42 77 59 00