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15/7/2005

Two exhibitions

Museum Kunstpalast, Dusseldorf

Neighborhoods: the Netherlands and Flanders
SLOW ART – The current art scene

General Director: Jean-Hubert Martin

Curator: Mattijs Visser

Project Management: Dr. des. Christiane Jungklaus

The ‘SLOW ART’ exhibit will expand the ‘A CELEBRATION OF PAINTING’ picture show by adding a look at the current art scene in the two neighboring countries of the Netherlands and Flanders. Presenting 37 artists, both renowned as well as young and unknown, the exhibit will illustrate the reception and further development of the traditional artistic genres of still life, landscape and portrait in the past twenty years.

‘Life is fast, art is slow’, wrote the Swiss painter, author and Romantic Johann Heinrich Füssli back in the eighteenth century. Many of the artists shown here are creating, in this day of hectic lifestyles and excessive visual stimuli, works of art which will only unfold their effects to visitors who bring plenty of time along with them. Not infrequently, the work required to create this art also took a good deal of time.

The Belgian Robert Devriendt, for instance, uses oil on canvas for landscapes that show great attention to rendering the material. He often spent months on his extremely small-size works. He forces the beholder to take a very close look and perceive nature down to the smallest detail. The Dutch artist Elske Neus - inspired by the Vanitas still lifes of the seventeenth century, which depict beetles, flies or snails - lets snails crawl over a circle of six small monitors in her video work ‘Dans’. In her work ‘Bett’, the Dutch artist Maria Roosen takes up the skillful representation of reflections and refractions of light characteristic of the still lives of the Old Masters: two glass balls glowing pink and orange lie between rumpled bed sheets in the form of female breasts whose round surfaces reflect the surroundings.

On exhibit will be paintings, graphic and plastic works, as well as video works by Dutch and Flemish artists such as Berlinde De Bruyckere, Marlene Dumas, Rineke Dijkstra, Mark Manders, Aernout Mik, Thierry De Cordier and Luc Tuymans. In conjunction with the exhibit, there will be a performance evening entitled ‘SLOW LIFE PERFORMANCES’, featuring such artists as Yael Davids, Lawrence Malstaf, Wim Vandekeybus, Carsten Höller, Marina Abramovic and Jan Fabre, among others, on October 31, 2005. (See enclosed overview on ‘Neighborhoods Flanders and the Netherlands – Life’)

SPONSORS:
the State Department of the Netherlands and the Ministry for education, culture and science, Ministry of Foreign Affairs/Buitenlandse Zaken, Ministry of the Flemish Community, Mondriaan Stichting (Mondriaan Foundation), the Royal Dutch Embassy in Berlin, and the General Consulate of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Duesseldorf; Kulturpartner WDR3, Handelsblatt, Frankenheim and Castenow.

NEIGHBORHOODS FLANDERS AND THE NETHERLANDS – LIVE EVENTS IN CONJUNCTION WITH THE EXHIBITS ‘A CELEBRATION OF PAINTING’ AND ‘SLOW ART’

Monday, October 31, 2005
7 p.m. – 12 midnight
SLOW LIFE PERFORMANCES

SLOW LIFE is an evening with a dozen young artists from Belgium and the Netherlands who, in various rooms in the museum, will be presenting performances, videos, readings and objets d'art in which living slowly plays a central part. The actions will be taking place continuously (from 7:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m.), so that everyone will have time to watch and listen, and also enjoy slow food.

The Israeli artist YAEL DAVIDS, who lives in the Netherlands, takes everyday objects, such as a cabinet, a chair, a mattress or an aquarium, and turns them into sculptures which do not come to life until a people take their place in or on them. Davids calls her objects ‘never-ending sculptures’. The Fleming KOEN VANMECHELEN decided to devote his life to raising hens in order to create a ‘global hen’. His travels have led him to Tanzania or to the Himalayas, for instance, where the primordial hen lives. In his talk, he will provide insights into the results that have been achieved and discuss possible future races of hen. The Brussels-born artist CARSTEN HÖLLER was originally a behavioral scientist and has continued to pursue his studies using inverting eyeglasses which turn everything seen through them upside down. After wearing the eyeglasses for a certain period, however, the brain adapts and begins to turn the image around again. Visitors will be led through the colle ction of abstract art.

The video ‘The Vanitas Record’ by KOEN THIJS is the largest vanitas picture in the world, a thirty-minute film in which skulls, books and 20,000 living snails play the leading role. The film, which premiered at the beginning of this year in Belgium, continues the tradition of the old Flemish vanitas paintings and is as spectacular as it is 'tedious'.

Additional artists who have been invited and may, under certain conditions, take part are: WIM DELVOYE, JAN FABRE (Video with Peter Sloterdijk), GERMAINE KRUIP, LAWRENCE MALSTAF, MARK MANDERS, AERNOUT MIK, LINDA MOLENAAR, MERLIN SPIE, BEREND STRIK WIM VANDEKEYBUS (Video with David Eugene Edwards) and HENK VISCH.

Saturday, November 5, 2005 9p.m.
THE NITS
in the Robert Schumann Hall

The NITS, founded in 1974 in Amsterdam, are one of the best known and most successful Dutch pop groups. In Germany, they are primarily known for their MTV hit ‘In the Dutch Mountains’ and numerous concerts (in the Frankfurt Mousonturm and the Fabrik in Hamburg, among others). What is less known, however, is that the lead singer, Henk Hofstede, is also a visual artist: at the last Biennale in Lyon, he exhibited an installation. Thus Henk Hofstede will also open the NEIGHBORHOODS project with a video installation. The NITS produce their music, the CD covers, video clips and concert and theater decorations themselves. For the coming tour, the NITS will also use their stereo projections, two large video screens, to enable the audience to visualize their music.

The concert on November 5 in the Robert Schumann Hall is the first in their tour of Germany. The music of the NITS is a lighthearted combination of XTC and Kraftwerk, a sort of chamber pop music. The lyrics are intellectual, usually witty, often poetic and not infrequently take rare works by well-known artists (A taste of Henry Moore) as their starting point. Their best-known CD’s are: In The Dutch Mountains, URK and TENT.

Admission reduced for pupils, students

Tickets to all the events are available at all sales agencies connected to Ticket Online. More information at http://www.robert-schumann-saal.de

Image: Juul Kraijer, o.T., 2002, Kohle auf Papier, 50 x 37 cm, collection of the artist

museum kunst palast
Ehrenhof 4-5 40479 Duesseldorf Germany
Admission price:
Euro 7.00, reduced: Euro 4.00
Public tours free of charge in combination with the "A Celebration of Painting" exhibit: Tuesdays and Sundays, 3:00 p.m.

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