calendario eventi  :: 

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29/1/2010

Two exhibitions

Cobra Museum, Amstelveen

Rob Voerman
Human Comfort
30.10 2010 - 30.05 2010

Human Comfort is Rob Voerman's first one-man museum exhibition in the Netherlands. In this extensive retrospective, Voerman shows work from 1998 to the present, including a new installation, Cinema, created exclusively for the Cobra Museum presentation.

In the last decade, Rob Voerman has built up an extensive body of installations and works on paper. He creates diverse forms of fictional architecture, in which the romantic process of building ones own structures and environments is contrasted to destruction, terror and threat. Voerman's societies are built from the leftovers of a dystopia.

Rob Voerman already enjoys wide international recognition. He has recently exhibited in London, Vienna and Berlin, and his work is found in important international collections. The Museum of Modern Art in New York has recently purchased new work by Voerman, as have the Generali Foundation and the Deutsche Bank.

The Cobra Museum exhibition includes a variety of smaller and larger installations, dating from 2001 to the present. It further includes numerous prints and watercolours, as well as separate film rooms. In one of these, viewers can experience a sculpture project in the centre of London. Three major installations can be accessed by visitors.

Cinema
Especially for this exhibition, Voerman developed a large, new installation. It is a white, formal construction, whose structure is reminiscent of a villa. Inside and around part of the construction is an apparently improvised shelter, built of wood, cardboard and magenta-coloured glass. The construction is comprised of an entrance that extends off to the sides into two other constructions. Walking straight from the entrance, visitors arrive in a small projection room, where a film is being shown. It shows a wooden construction that extends into the projection room itself in a perfectly natural fashion, as though we were physically looking into the entrance to a tunnel. Inside the installation, a clear contrast is created between the projection room and the other spaces. To a degree, Cinema makes us think of shelters constructed by homeless people, but the projection room is extremely threatening and dark. Because of the reddish glass, the other spaces evoke associations with a lounge or a church. Comfort, a sense of security, threat and anxiety all engage in a fascinating symbiosis.

Rob Voerman (b. Deventer, NL, 1966)
Rob Voerman's architectural constructions are built from organic, tattered materials: cardboard, discarded wood, found objects, etc. His watercolours, prints and installations all present nonexistent architecture in remote or urban environments. The constructions evoke a strong sense of alienation, based on associations with our contemporary living environment. Fictional neighbourhoods, after a catastrophe for example, have been taken over by these constructions. The materials are reworked in apparently ad hoc fashion into models with both utopian and sinister atmosphere. Romanticism is embellished and combined with the dark traits of terror and rebellion.

Voerman's architecture is impossible and non-functional. His hybrid structures are built from inadequate, impermanent and porous materials. Like a virus, decay and corrosion eat away at the foundations. What remains are the ruins of modernity. Where architecture defines and demarcates a space, Rob Voerman�fs models are part of an indeterminate space that offers nothing to hold on to. His urban landscapes and industrial sketches bear the traces of the history of mankind in the same way that Italo Calvino speaks of untouched places that refer to a lost, imagined past.

The post-apocalyptic world of Rob Voerman is filled with floating contradictions: archaic versus futuristic, romanticism and fear, nature versus technology, utopia versus dystopia, order and chaos. Domed or elongated forms evoke associations with ancient places of refuge and shelter: caves, huts and churches. But these architectural visions refer to alien, technologically advanced, complex life forms. It is in such undefined spaces that we seek shelter and security: the spectrum to which the title refers.

The work of Rob Voerman does not merely possess a dark side. It points to a new approach to our living environment, where people instinctively reinforce one another, where they speak of improvisation and innovation. It is the same context that includes investment in new energy sources and cradle-to-cradle thinking.

Where Constant Nieuwenhuys created his New Babylon as an achievable utopia in the 1950s and 60s, Voerman now creates informal, improvised architecture, in part generated from his criticism of existing cultural, social and financial systems. Today's reality shows the reverse side of urbanization and unshakable faith in progress through technology. The dilemmas of the fictional society that Rob Voerman investigates in his unique, personal way are consequently poignant and very relevant.

Publication
Late January will see the release of the artist's book: Rob Voerman, Aftermath: Installations, Sculptures, Works on Paper. The publication offers many points of departure and perspectives for exploring the work of Rob Voerman. Authors include Sabine Folie, director of the Generali Foundation, Vienna, art historian and author of countless monographs and articles; David van der Leer, art and architecture historian and assistant curator for architecture at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, who examines Voerman's work by way of architectural issues; and Tim Nolet, art historian at the University of Amsterdam, who explores relationships between Voerman�fs work and developments in technology and philosophy.

The publication is supported by the Netherlands' Foundation for Fine Art, Design and Architecture, in association with Upstream Gallery. (www.valiz.nl ISBN 978-90-78088-40-0, in Dutch and English).

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Nina Fischer & Maroan el Sani
Spelling Dystopia
30.01 2010 - 25.04 2010

From 30 January Nina Fischer and Maroan el Sani exhibit their latest video installation 'Spelling Dystopia' (2009) at the Cobra Museum of Modern Art. Their intriguing film 'Spelling Dystopia' was only shown before in Berlin.

Several places that were once hallmarks, centers of political culture, avant-garde art, and social developments, have become blind spots in contemporary society. Nina Fischer and Maroan el Sani want to bring them back to today's consciousness in their altered state: not utopian, not obsolete, but rather not yet redefined.

The film 'Spelling Dystopia' focuses on the public perception of the uninhabited island Hashima near Nagasaki, which has a vivid history. Hashima has been an important location for Japanese coal-mining until 1974. It is a man-made artificial island, based on the use of concrete. During the World War II it was a work camp for war prisoners from Korea and China. In the 60s it became the most dense place on earth. With a size of only 160 x 450 m the island was inhabited by over 5000 people in its best times, working in the Mitsubishi-owned coalmine. The density of the population was higher than in Tokyo's most crowded parts today. From 1974 the island was abandoned. In the year 2000 it became the film location of a science fiction blockbuster 'Battle Royale'. The younger generation started to know the place mostly from movies, mangas and video games.

Fischer and El Sani focus on the transfer of collective memories. In 'Spelling Dystopia' they combine the memories of a former inhabitant of the island with the narration of two high school students who recall fragments of the science fiction movie 'Battle Royale'. Thereby, the island appears almost as their fantasy, an imaginary playground for their games, where various images and layers of reality and fiction already got in a state of mingling.

Nina Fischer (1965, Emden) and Maroan el Sani (1966, Duisberg) work together since 1993. They live and work in Berlijn and Sapporo (Japan).


Image: Rob Voerman

Press contact:
Lieke Fijen, l.fijen@cobra-museum.nl, tel. +31-(0)20 5475038.

Cobra Museum of Modern Art
Sandbergplein 1 1181 ZX Amstelveen
Tues-Sun, 11:00am-5:00pm
Closed Monday, 30 Apr.
Open other public holidays (also when on Monday and 5 May)
Entrance
Adult € 9,50
0 - 5 y (with the exception of groups) free
6 - 18 y € 5,00
Cjp / students - 27 y € 5,00

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