calendario eventi  :: 

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12/6/2008

Two exhibitions

Witte de With, Rotterdam

Curated by Nicolaus Schafhausen, Zoe Gray

Saâdane Afif

Witte de With presents a solo exhibition by Saâdane Afif. The exhibition, titled Technical Specifications, consists of new sculptures and installations, each of which is an adaptation by Afif of one of his previous works. The exhibition’s title sets the parameters for this transformation: each new work uses as a starting point the technical specifications of the original.

Visitors to Witte de With will also find three radios playing a program of songs inspired by Afif’s sculptures. Their introductions are scripted by Afif and read aloud in the style of a popular radio DJ, citing the technical specifications of the work, the author of the lyrics and the composer of the song. This radio program will be recorded live during the opening and broadcast in a loop from the roof of a neighbouring building to the surrounding area for the duration of the exhibition (FM frequency 107.5 Mhz).

Afif’s work vibrates with multiple meanings and reveals a fascination with music and music culture. His sculptures often adopt the forms of microphones, amplifiers, speakers, of musical instruments and their decorative finishes. And many of his works include music as an active ingredient. Another recurring element in Afif’s oeuvre is the passing of time, sometimes represented through a vanitas trope (particularly the image of a skull), or through the use of clocks as part of his formal vocabulary.

Abandoning the position of the isolated artist taking sole responsibility for the outcome of his work, Afif adopts an unusual artistic approach. He practices a form of artistic delegation, creating an extensive network of commissions to artists, writers, designers and musicians. Starting in 2004, Afif began to invite writers to create lyrics based upon his own artworks. These were presented in several exhibitions as wall texts (in place of the usual didactic institutional labels) alongside Afif’s original works. He then gave these lyrics to musicians and commissioned them to write music based upon the words. The resulting songs were then presented in the gallery spaces and released on various CDs.

Afif’s generous and dialogical approach to the creation – and mediation – of art explores the relationship between the original and the reproduction. At Witte de With, in dialogue with the curators, Afif takes this process of translating his work a step further, by reworking for the first time his own sculptures and installations. Additionally, broadcasting the radio show will create an alternative space and time frame in which to experience his works. In this way, the exhibition Technical Specifications represents an implosion and explosion of Afif’s practice, as he simultaneously reduces his own works to the sum of their parts and opens them up to new authors, new readings, new formats and new audiences beyond the institution’s walls.
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Annette Kelm

Witte de With presents a solo exhibition of new and existing works by the Berlin-based photographer Annette Kelm. With intense visual clarity, she portrays objects dislocated from their usual context. Contrary to their apparent simplicity and reduced aesthetic, Kelm’s images contain a wealth of references, from interior design and architecture, to Hollywood films or current day concerns with exoticism and global trade.

Among the works shown at Witte de With are a selection from Kelm’s Big Prints series of 2007, photographs of printed fabrics designed by Dorothy Draper, an American decorator for the rich and famous in the 1940s. Draper’s designs borrowed heavily from Hawaiian and African fabrics, transforming tribal patterns into chic wallpapers and fabrics. Here the fabrics are photographed flat and at close range, highlighting the beauty of the patterns’ compositions, as well as the disjunction between the fabric’s woven texture and the glossy paper of the photographic print.

Also presented at Witte de With is Caps (2008), a series of 20 images of almost identical caps, edged in different colors and taken from various angles. Kelm found these hats in New York’s Chinatown and was attracted by their marriage of the traditional Chinese straw hat with the shape of the classic all-American baseball cap.

For this exhibition, Kelm has produced a new body of work exploring the pre-fabricated houses that emerged in Germany in the post-war years. Intrigued by the high level of ornamentation they display – quite at odds with usual notions of pre-fab architecture – Kelm photographed these houses using a 4x5 large format plate camera, a slow process with only one shot per plate. The resulting images treat each house as an object, but avoid a Becher-like categorization, capturing instead the poetic quality of these “Swiss” chalets and “Swedish” villas.

Revealing her own research-based practice, Kelm’s works spark off a chain reaction of associations and draw upon the rich vocabulary of the history of painting, sculpture and – particularly – photography. Despite the seemingly deadpan presentation of her subject matter, Kelm’s photographs contain a certain natural beauty and reveal a subtle sense of humor. This lyrical quality sets her apart from earlier conceptual photographers (eg. Dan Graham, Christopher Williams), demonstrating her reassessment of contemporary photography and the freshness of her approach.

At Witte de With, Kelm’s photographs are presented within the remains of Liam Gillick’s solo exhibition, which imposed an architectural meta-structure onto the gallery spaces. This framework designated which rooms were to be used for the presentation of Gillick’s work and which were to be seen as “institutional zones”, for which he gave back the responsibility to the curatorial team. Witte de With chose to use these spaces to present the work of other artists, first with Manon de Boer, then Keren Cytter, Gareth Moore, Claire Fontaine and now – as a final installment – Annette Kelm. Gillick’s meta-structure will be dismantled as Kelm’s show closes.

With thanks to: Goethe Institut, Rotterdam ; Johann Koenig, Berlin; Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen e.V.

Note to press
For further information, please contact Nathalie Hartjes on press@wdw.nl or +31 (0)10 411 0144.

Publication: Witte de With and KW Institute for Contemporary Art Berlin will publish a new book by Annette Kelm in 2008, designed by Hendrik Schwantes. It will feature a dialogue between the artist, Nicolaus Schafhausen and Susanne Pfeffer, and essays by Zoë Gray and Dirk von Lowtzow.

Annette Kelm, Big Print #6 (Jungle Leaves - cotton twill 1947 design Dorothy Draper, courtesy Schumacher & Co), 2007 c-print; 131,5 x 100,5 cm

Witte de With
Witte de Withstraat - Rotterdam

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