Two exhibitions
dal 30/11/2012 al 11/1/2013
Segnalato da
30/11/2012
Two exhibitions
Galerie Fons Welters, Amsterdam
In the past decades, poetry and literature have been a thriving force for Job Koelewijn's artistic practice, that although diverse in its media, materials and references. Edward Clydesdale Thomson: dispersed through the space, steel constructions are leaning against the walls, turning the space into a temporary repository.
Job Koelewijn
Collage / Storyboard
Galerie Fons Welters is proud to present the fifth solo exhibition of Job Koelewijn.
Stock cubes wrapped in poetry (‘Passage’, 1996); a tombstone from baby powder in honor of Dutch poet Hendrik Marsman (‘Marsman…, goodbye’, 1995); a tape measure with the last poem by Samuel Beckett (‘Poetry Lock’, 2000); a book case in the shape of the eternity sign (‘Untitled’, 2006); Spinoza’s ‘Ethica’ covered in hypnotizing mandala’s (‘Nursery Piece’, 2009). In the past decades, poetry and literature have been a thriving force for Job Koelewijn’s artistic practice. A practice that although diverse in its media, materials and references, finds coherence through the artist’s gift to bring them together in a new synthesis, wherein art becomes an act of regeneration and purification, wherein art offers the possibility to intensify reality.
For his solo exhibition ‘Collage / Storyboard’ at Galerie Fons Welters, Koelewijn presents two bodies of work. Since 1 February 2006, the artist each day records himself while reading out loud from a diverse range of books – from Peter Sloterdijk’s ‘Critique of Cynical Reason’, to the ‘Songbook of David Bowie’ to ‘The I Ching – Book of Changes’. Each book is read from front to back, for precisely 45 minutes a day – one side of a cassette tape. With its title ‘Relief 1’ and ‘Relief 2’ the artist offers a subtle word play, referencing the manner in which these books and cassette tapes are presented on a wooden panel, where the height of the tapes indicates the volume of the book underneath. Each tape in a way is drained with Koelewijn’s voice, just like the stock cubes were once wrapped in poetry. For the artist, this daily repetitive gesture is much like a pragmatic ritual, through which language becomes a mental workout, nurturing, activating, alerting the brain and in Koelewijn’s case, creating relief. Yet, it is not just a ritual, as the artist tells: ‘It’s about setting yourself an objective. A mechanic act does not necessarily have to lead to benumbing’.
This quality of the mechanic repetitiveness returns in Koelewijn’s new series ‘Collage / Storyboard’ that in a different manner brings together the broad frame of references that have intrigued Koelewijn over time. Philosophy, poetry, religious spirituality, vernacular culture found in Spakenburg’s traditional clothing, historic cleansing methods, even Dickie Dik make up the different layers of a monumental circle. Each layer is cut through in growing circles – much like a tree’s year rings – working through the image so to speak, to make room for yet again a new layer. The circle can be seen as a metaphor for perfect harmony and equilibrium, yet with the passing of time they will slowly change color and reveal their physicality in a different manner. Each separate layer, each cut circle, comes together in a stop motion animation, melting high and low culture; fiction and reality. As such it offers a counterweight to the tactility and physicality of the circle itself. A new mechanism of illusion comes into being, words and images are slowly revealed, as if the circles are slowly breathing with a power beyond itself. Here as well, we might find relief in the comfort words sometimes offer.
[Laurie Cluitmans]
This exhibition was made possible with the support of OBA, The Central Library Amsterdam
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Edward Clydesdale Thomson
Causa Finalis
Galerie Fons Welters invites you to the exhibition ‘Causa Finalis’ by Edward Clydesdale Thomson in Playstation. Dispersed through the space, steel constructions – gates or parts of gates in different sizes and shapes – are leaning against the walls, resting on cushions, lying on the floor, and standing on top of carpets, turning the space into a temporary repository. One of the gates, blocking the passage of the gallery space, forces the visitor to pass through and as such seems to accentuate its corridor-like architecture. The structures’ forms might resemble minimalist sculpture, yet their decorative counterparts found in the textiles’ prints, give way to a different reading. In fact, through a process of abstraction and translation, Clydesdale Thomson derived these forms from the eighteenth century topiary garden designed by the Scottish architect Robert Lorimer (1864-1929) for Earlshall Castle in Scotland. At first sight, one could imagine topiary – the cutting and shaping of ever greens into specific forms – to have gone out of fashion a long time ago, as the invitation card to this exhibition perhaps indicates: in 1713, with his satirical enumeration of possible topiary, English poet Alexander Pope (1688-1744), announced a turning point in the then popular topiary. With his mock inventory: ‘The Tower of Babel, not yet finished’; ‘St George in box; his arm scarce long enough, but will be in condition to stick the dragon by next April’, he heralded a more natural form of landscaping to come into fashion, only for topiary to come back into fashion again with the Cottage Garden and the Arts and Crafts Movement, advocated a.o. by Lorimer.
What does the image we call landscape mean? How does it move between nature’s nature, a cultural construct connected to its time and preferences, and a commodified product? Questions that lie at the fore of Edward Clydesdale Thomson’s practice and his exhibition in Playstation. Understanding these questions is for the artist as political as it is aesthetical. Sharpening the boundaries of design, functionality and visual art, he at the same time opens a door to a more open reading. As such the title of this exhibition ‘Causa Finalis’ is perhaps not suggesting that it is for the sake of which everything in the production process is done, such as the yew plants being grown into certain shapes; rather this final cause seems ever changing.
[Laurie Cluitmans]
Scottish/Danish artist Edward Clydesdale Thomson (1982) studied at the Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam, the architectural program at the Glasgow School of Art and is currently a resident at the Rijksakademie, Amsterdam. In 2011 he was awarded the Lecturis Award and nominated for the Prix de Rome. Exhibitions include ‘Secret Gardens’, TENT, Rotterdam; ‘There was a Country where They were all Thieves’, Jeanine Hofland Contemporary Art, Amsterdam; 'Borderline Picturesque & the Recounting Prospect’, Tromsø Kunstforening, Tromsø, Norway; ‘Observing Construction’, Netherlands Architectuurinstituut (NAi) Rotterdam. ‘My Travels with Barry’, Tent, Rotterdam.
On Saturday 1 and Sunday 2 December his work will be shown as part of the Open Studios at the Rijksakademie.
This exhibition was made possible with the support of The Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst
Image: Collage / Storyboard, 2012stop motion animation [Spinoza]
The opening of the exhibition will take place during Amsterdam Art Weekend, presented by Capital A. Nov 30: 12 - 8pm / Dec 1: 10 am - 8 pm / Dec 2: 12-5 pm.
Galerie Fons Welters
Bloemstraat 140 1016 LJ Amsterdam
Opening hours
Tuesday - Saturday, 13 - 18 pm
The exhibition will be closed from 24 December 2012 - 3 January 2013.