Kunstverein

Benefit event

admin — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 07:29:58 +0000

Benefit event

18 September
20.00

Kunstverein will celebrate its first anniversary on the 18th of September with a benefit event featuring a special opening of the exhibition High Level Margins With A Catalogue by Nedko Solakov and a series of unusual boat rides hosted by American artist Doug Fishbone.

Doug Fishbone’s performances weave elaborate narratives and visual tapestries from familiar freely found imagery that question the way information is presented, manipulated and processed in the current cultural and visual landscape. Interested in the politics of representation the artist’s monologues constantly shift, narrating grey areas between our perceived notions of fact and fiction, myth and propaganda, comedy and advertising.

The evening starts at 20.00 at Aan de Amstel, Weesperzijde 42a, which besides hosting drinks and music, also functions as information and gathering point from where you will be escorted to the appropriate locations.

Doug Fishbone’s performance starts at 20.30 and 21.30 and Nedko Solakov’s installation is open throughout the evening but limited to five persons at the time.

Tickets for the benefit event are 50 Euro and include a yearlong membership (worth 50 Euro). Members have free admission.

For reservation please RSVP before 13 September to office@kunstverein.nl

Nedko Solakov

admin — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 07:23:01 +0000

Nedko Solakov
“High Level Margins With A Catalogue”
18 September – 21 November 2010

Special private view as part of Kunstverein’s Benefit event
18 September 20.00 – 23.00

Kunstverein will celebrate its first anniversary with a special commission by Nedko Solakov entitled High Level Margins With A Catalogue.
Hailing from Sofia as one of Bulgaria’s finest, Nedko Solakov’s artistic practice is best described as a hurricane of wittily and often with humor constructed stories that poetically, politically and institutionally criticize their surroundings. Solakov is mostly known for his (tiny) handwritten comments that are often displayed in spaces, which at first appear to be empty. Playing with the viewer’s expectations is a particular goal in Solakov’s work in which the viewer is often obligated to knee, bend or perform other movements to be able to read the comments up close.

To come full circle, Kunstverein has invited Solakov to view the architecture of the space from literally a higher level, namely the ceiling’s margins. Barely readable tiny writings and drawings form a story that represent the artist’ spirit within the space.

The catalogue will function as key to exhibition, as it thoroughly and conveniently represents all the stories as seen from the above, with close-ups of the little scenarios and the now perfectly readable texts.
The viewer will therefore experience the “bare” architecture of the space, only this time lead by an imaginary world.

Lezing #1 M.V.

admin — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 21:39:09 +0000

Lezing #1 M.V.
16 July 19.00

The first in a series of lectures by Koen Brams on remarkable yet overlooked figures of the Belgium art scene who have appeared and disappeared at historically significant moments in time.

In 1973 Marian Verstraeten (31 May 1951-11 February 1997) started working for radio 3 in Belgium. During that time, Verstraeten conducted interviews with artists such as Robert Rauschenberg, Marcel Broodthaers, Robert Ryman and David Hockney while simultaneously working as a translator/editor for Bozar, center for fine arts in Brussels. Afterwards, Verstraeten became editor of the art magazines +-0 and Artefactum and started working as the assistant of visual artist, art critic and theoretician Fernand Spillemaeckers who initiated the progressive Galerie MTL in Brussels.
Founded 1970, Galerie MTL provided a platform for more than a hundred exhibitions, of which mostly were dedicated to conceptual art. Many important artists at the time exhibited at the gallery among whom Sol LeWitt, Gilberto Zorio, Daniel Buren, André Cadere, Marcel Broodthaers, Jan Dibbets, Mel Bochner, Joseph Kosuth, Guy Mees, Hanne Darboven, John Baldessari and Robert Ryman

Marian Verstraeten’s files provide a rich and unvarnished impression of what happened during that period.

Brunch Lunch Launch

admin — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 16:15:12 +0000

Kunstverein’s Brunch Lunch Launch presents Ginger&Piss #1: Loud
Contributions by Elvira Belafonte, Hula Capellinni, Billy Male and G. Alonso Oeuf
27 June 2010, 2–5 pm with a performance by Matthew Lutz-Kinoy starting at 3.30 pm

Dear Reader,

Ginger&Piss is Kunstverein’s in-house magazine – a cross between an academic journal and a darts club newsletter. Ginger&Piss (the name a misquotation of Lawrence Weiner) is published twice yearly, with the first edition appearing in a short run. Each issue contains a maximum of five or six contributions of varying length, appropriate to the individual subject matter.

The remit of Ginger&Piss is simple; to offer an outlet for authors to say what they feel is vital (and not necessarily at all related to the art world) but were unable, unwilling or too afraid to publish previously. The concept dictates that each contributor writes under a pseudonym. The editors guarantee full anonymity.

The use of pseudonyms can be considered an answer to the cowardice of the art world, albeit a somewhat hypocritical one. By providing a platform for candid critique but at the same time allowing the author to hide behind a pseudonym, Ginger&Pisss recognizes its own complicit cowardice. In fact, Ginger&Piss fully embraces its somewhat misleading bravery, but maintains that it makes sense for now, for the current cultural climate.

Loud is the subject of the first issue and it is a broad – probably far too broad – theme (if a theme at all). In fact Quiet might have been more appropriate. But perhaps a clear, ‘honest’ voice is better suggested by volume than whispering.

Krist Gruijthuijsen & Maxine Kopsa
Editors

In conjunction with the magazine’s launch, Kunstverein will host a performance
by Matthew Lutz-Kinoy

Welcome to the story of my life is a dazzling one-man musical extravaganza in which the performer and the objects presented are in a constant state of transition. Loosely based upon the life of Fassbinder’s Maria Braun, Lutz-Kinoy’s narrative follows an array of performance elements such as musical theater tropes and pop / jazz dance in which the objects, surrounding the protagonist, constantly change their meaning.

Dexter Sinister, A Model of The Serving Library

admin — Mon, 03 May 2010 12:32:28 +0000

Dexter Sinister, A Model of The Serving Library
29 May – 24 July
Private view: 28 May, 7 – 9 PM

During Spring and Summer Kunstverein will collaborate with Dexter Sinister.
Dexter Sinister is the compound name of David Reinfurt and Stuart Bailey who, in 2006 established a workshop and bookstore with the same name in New York’s Lower East Side.

Most of Dexter Sinister’s projects have explored aspects of contemporary publishing in many different contexts. As well as designing, editing, producing, and distributing both printed and digital media, Dexter Sinister have also worked with ambiguous roles and formats, usually in the live contexts of galleries and museums. Their bi-annual house journal Dot Dot Dot (begun in Amsterdam in 2000) often functions as a framework within such projects.

Currently Dexter Sinister intends to dissolve all their activities (including the journal, workshop and bookstore) into one single project called The Serving Library. The Serving Library is as much social furniture as it is a specific model. It intends to operate on the principle of developing something in public and will eventually comprise: a physical library, a collection of artefacts, a teaching facility and a journal entitled “Bulletin of The Serving Library”.

For Kunstverein, a speculative model version of the Library is developed providing the backdrop for a number of seminars and other events, which will discuss issues drawn from the contents of the library. The artefacts and books will serve as triggers for conversation and teaching, and the space will serve as a meeting point and hangout. The whole might be considered a kind of temporary school — a school primarily concerned with what a contemporary art school might become.

——————————————

Events

Within the framework of A Model of The Serving Library, Kunstverein will organize various events that reflect upon aspects addressed within the library’s content.

31 May – 2 June
“Applied Art” starting each day at 2 pm at Kunstverein
Workshops hosted by Dexter Sinister with Gerrit Rietveld Academy (31 May), Piet Zwart Institute (1 June) and Werkplaats Typografie (2 June). The workshops are open to the public.
Please make reservations before 27 May to office@kunstverein.nl

27 June 14.00 – 17.00
Brunch Lunch Launch of Kunstverein’s first issue of its own house magazine Ginger&Piss with a performance by Matthew Lutz-Kinoy.

16 July 19.00
Lezing #1 M.V.
The first in a series of lectures by Koen Brams on remarkable yet overlooked figures of the Belgium art scene who have appeared and disappeared at historically significant moments in time.

Simon Martin

admin — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 13:02:57 +0000

Simon Martin
7 March – 9 May 2010

With UR Feeling, a lecture at Hermitage, 6 March 2010, 4 pm
Private view: 6 March 2010, 6–8 pm

Simon Martin’s practice could be summed up as a continuing, considered inspection of the significance of our cultural baggage – how it is thought about, displayed, categorised and remembered. Whether painting, sculpture or moving image, Martin’s work examines the relationship society forms not only with its artworks but also (historical) artefacts, human icons (Warhol) and objects of design (Memphis).

Untitled (2010) is a formal study of a sculpture – an African figurine placed next to an organic lemon. The sculpture is empirically investigated, observed, rotated, examined as it hovers between a state of pure objecthood and unblemished representation. It could equally be an advert for the sculpture, with its quick edits moving sleekly across surface of the elusive product. This is clearly an animation and, like a diagram or a sign, an animation has no ‘weight’. Or does it? Untitled transitions from knowing to sensing to not-knowing and back again. Untitled ’s duplicity is echoed by the bronze ‘desk sculpture’ with accompanying real organic lemon, called Untitled (2007). A replica of the same African figurine as depicted in the animation, Untitled, like its counterpart, refuses to become a clear-cut, easily defined object. On the one hand, it touches the familiar as a generic model of an African artefact, perhaps a discreetly decorous souvenir, on the other, in its modest placement, remains unsettlingly enigmatic. There is a hint of inert aggression in its demand for wholeness: without the commitment of he who oversees the work – he who promises to replenish the organic lemon – Untitled is not complete; or simply is not.

‘They will feel in the alleyways something, but it’s not quite medieval and its not quite modern. It’s something else. In other words, my whole idea of affect is that you experience something, you feel something, you see something, but you can’t quite explain it. It has an Ur-dimension to it… something between understanding and not, lets say.’ (Peter Eisenman)

UR Feeling is the title of a lecture or ‘investigation’ by Simon Martin. According to Martin, “the UR Feeling describes a pre- or non-verbal moment of apprehension”. The title is taken from a conversation between the architects Peter Eisenman and Charles Jenks. Eisenman outlines a situation where the plural coding of architectural forms and a careful attention to the social history of a place begin to produce a particular affect on the viewer. For Eisenman these affects appear as ‘texts’ and are intended to be explicit and physical.

The UR Feeling lecture will be held once only, prior to the opening on March 6, 4 pm at the Hermitage, Nieuwe Herengracht 14. Along with Untitled (2010) and Untitled (2007), it forms the third part of the artist’s exhibition at Kunstverein.

Seeing as space is limited for the lecture, please make reservations before 3 March to office@kunstverein.nl. Kunstverein’s members will have priority.

Kunstverein’s Store for Independent Publishing presents Garamond Press

admin — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 12:55:02 +0000

Kunstverein’s Store for Independent Publishing presents
False Friends by Garamond Press
7 March – 9 May 2010

Private view: 6 March, 6–8 pm

Antonio Pigafetta’s questionable travelogue from 1591, titled Regnum Congo, was based upon stories from Duarte Lopez, a Portuguese explorer who supposedly visited the Congo. The travelogue introduces an odd vision of European landscape in which fantastic creatures are presented. South-African artist Ruth Sacks re-contextualizes these historical interpretations by re-appropriating them into contemporary conditions, juxtaposing the varied characteristics. Hence the logo of her fictional publishing house, Garamond Press: a fantastic animal based upon a description of one of the possible animals from Regnum Congo.

Kunstverein is proud to present and produce the Garamond Press’ first publication False Friends. The narrative of the book derives from the storyline of Edgar Allen Poe’s “Murders at the Rue Morgue” from 1841, generally agreed to be the first detective story ever written. This contemporary version is set in Antwerp, Belgium, and is split into three languages: Dutch (Flemish), French and English. To follow the story’s plot, one has to be fluent in all three languages.

ISBN: 978-94-90629-02-1
€ 12,50

“grey-blue grain”, an exhibition by Adam Pendleton

admin — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 08:14:51 +0000

“grey-blue grain”, an exhibition by Adam Pendleton
12 Dec. 2009 – 31 Jan. 2010

grey-blue grain is the second in a three-part program by Adam Pendleton entitled EL T D K Amsterdam, comprising, along with this exhibition, two performances.
grey-blue grain is a selection of projects from 2007-09 that deal directly with the abstraction and instrumentalization of language and image through sculpture and wall-based work, including including a selection from his ongoing System of Display, mirror and glass works that atomize historical trajectories and textual realities through framing, reflection and fragmentation; sculptural work derived from the code-based work of ‘Clairvoyant Poet’ Hannah Weiner; poster-format rereading of texts based on the work of Liam Gillick and Malcolm X; and fresh configurations of the artist’s abstract and phenomenological alphabet, Untitled (small black cubes).

Adam Pendleton’s conceptual practice constructs formal templates in which he slots information. As a painter, writer and performer, he uses extreme freedom of reference and quotation, as well as a rejection of conventional hierarchies among sources, to create a re-historicized present, one that upsets and unbalances comfortably subjective interpretations of history and culture.

Over the past few years American artist Adam Pendleton has written various performances in which he exploits the easy-psychology of autobiographical readings by using devices that render language concrete and contingent. Often he combines specialized discourses and common knowledge in a redistribution of cultural information. Previous performances range from the evening length 30-person gospel choir production The Revival to a series of manifestos such as the Black Dada Manifesto.

EL T D K Amsterdam is a collaboration between Kunstverein, Amsterdam and de Appel.

Note:
Part three, BAND, will be performed the 13th and 14th of December at 8.30 PM
Location: De Brakke Grond (Rode Zaal), Nes 45, Amsterdam

For reservations, please contact: +31 (0)20 626 68 66 or hzomer@deappel.nl

BAND is a form and content refashioning of Jean-Luc Godard’s Sympathy for the Devil. Made in the aftermath of May ’68, the original film helped mark Godard’s break from his Nouvelle Vague period into a more committed engagement with the politics and class struggles of the time. It modelled the director’s emerging political faith that radical formal complexity could undermine the bourgeois logic implicit to narrative filmmaking. Often read as a tribute to the Rolling Stones whose rehearsals form an ongoing motif in the film, the Stones were in fact emblematic of the mainstream counterculture from which Godard was attempting to remove himself. BAND will unfold in stages, beginning at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 17th with a rehearsal and live concert by the indie-rock/post-punk band Deerhoof. The Amsterdam performance/reading will present the first edit of footage from Toronto with work-in-progress sequences from texts based on the work of authors explicitly related to Godard’s film, such as the Black Panther’ Eldridge Cleaver; or tangentially related, such as Gertrude Stein. The final stage of BAND will occur at The Kitchen, New York in Fall 2010.

Co-producers: Wayne Baerwaldt, Alberta College of Art + Design, Calgary; Noah Cowan, Toronto International Film Festival, Future Projections; Ann Demeester, De Appel, Amsterdam with additional support from Rashida Bumbray, The Kitchen, New York.

Kunstverein’s Store for Independent Publishing presents Ray Johnson “A Book about Death”

admin — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 22:39:43 +0000

Ray Johnson “A Book about Death”, 1963–1965
12 Dec. 2009 – 31 Jan. 2010

Ray Johnson’s (Detroit, 1927) early work consisted of intricately painted geometric abstractions influenced by Albers’ color theories, and he exhibited with the American Abstract Artists group, including Ad Reinhardt and Leon Polk Smith. Soon, however, he turned to complex collages combining images with ink and paint or other surface textures that reflected the atmosphere of Abstract Expressionism then still prevalent in New York. During the 1950’s, Johnson established the format and style he would continue to use throughout his life. Kindred in spirit to the work of Joseph Cornell, he called his small irregularly shaped collages “moticos”, an anagram for “osmotic” (from osmosis). Johnson’s works continued the Dada and Surrealist tradition of collage (including that of Kurt Schwitters and Max Ernst) and pursued the provocation of paradoxical verbal and visual puns, absurd juxtapositions, word-play riddles and hidden references with a witty nihilistic sense of humor.

Johnson wrote poetic texts and letters and integrated language and a unique system of cryptic signs into his work. Considered by many the “father of Mail Art”, as early as 1953 Johnson began sending highly conceptual images/texts to friends, often encouraging the recipient to “add to” the work, or “please send to” someone else, or “return to Ray Johnson”. Forming the “New York Correspondence School” in 1962, Johnson established an enormous network of participants throughout the world – one which remains active even after his death, as is evident with Ray Johnson web sites on the Internet. Paralleling the idea of Allan Kaprow’s Happenings and of later Fluxus events, in the early 1960’s he began doing “Nothings” – informal performance art or non-art pieces which were continued over the years under the guise of NYCS meetings or lectures. Johnson was recognized as much for his performance-like persona as his collages and mailings.

In 1968, on the day Andy Warhol was shot, Johnson himself was mugged, an event which precipitated his move to Locust Valley, Long Island. Although he remained involved with the art scene through conversations and correspondences, he gradually withdrew from actively exhibiting. Johnson continued to make art, however, such as the master collages he worked on over a period of many years. He also continued to perform in his own circuitous ways, until apparent suicide on the night of Friday the 13th of January, 1995, when he was last seen leaping off the bridge in Sag Harbor, Long Island doing the back stroke into oblivion, and act some consider to be his last “performance”.

Between 1963 and 1965, Ray Johnson printed thirteen pages of his Book about Death with the Pernet Printing Company, 120 Lexington Avenue at 28th Street. His title, which designated the thirteen unbound pages as a book, is A Book about Death, yet also A Boop about Death and A Boom about Death. Those thirteen photo-offset pages were re-printed in 1976 for a catalogue, Correspondence, North Carolina Museum of Art, Richard Craven, editor and curator. The Carolina pages were folded once from the bottom, hence are not quite like the pages Ray folded for envelopes.

The presentation at Kunstverein will include a publication by Bill Wilson, which elaborates on each of the pages of “A Book about Death”.

Kunstverein would like to thank The Estate of Ray Johnson represented exclusively by
Richard L. Feigen & Co.

Kunstverein’s Store for Independent Publishingpresents Hyphen Press London/UK

admin — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 07:38:42 +0000

Books for sale and on view from 9 Oct. – 30 Nov. 2009.

Featuring:
– Norman Potter, What is a designer
– Norman Potter, Models & Constructs
– Anthony Froshaug: Typography & texts / Documents of a life
– E.C. Large, Sugar in the air
– E.C. Large, Asleep in the afternoon
– Stuart Bailey & Robin Kinross, God’s amateur

‘Hyphen Press was started in 1980 to publish one book, What is a designer by Norman Potter. This book had been published first in 1969, in the wake of the events of that time. Potter, then teaching design, joined the students at Hornsey College of Art in their occupation of the school. By the late-1970s the book was out of print, and its publisher was now part of a larger imprint with no interest in reissuing it. Norman Potter and I worked together on a second edition, expanding it to about twice the length of the original. In full control of editing, design and production, we made the book we wanted. Partly as a way of supplying pictures to an unillustrated work, Potter wrote an accompanying pamphlet, Designing a present, which included contributions from his colleagues. We handled distribution ourselves, and encountered all the difficulties that this brings. But the book sold out eventually. What is a designer certainly has the spirit of 1968 – but, as its subsequent history has shown, it has other dimensions too.

This adventure set the course for Hyphen Press. Through the 1980s, I was busy with other things, and selling this book was just a part of my activities. Hyphen started a second phase of life when Potter and I started work on a third edition of What is a designer, and on his second book Models & Constructs. These were published in 1989 and 1990. After this the list began to grow, with other writers joining. Each book continued to be in some way a collaboration between author (often also designer) and myself as editor.

In 2000 I finished a book about the typographer Anthony Froshaug, which I had worked on for about 15 years. Froshaug and Potter were close friends and colleagues, and it had been Froshaug who had introduced me to Potter. So this book joined the sequence of works that represent and document a certain element of English culture, and one that was previously unknown except within small circles.

Later still, in 2008, with Potter and Froshaug long gone, we added to this sequence by reissuing books by the English writer E.C. Large – which had provided some inspiration and reassurance for both of them. This effort of rediscovery was done in collaboration with Stuart Bailey. He and I made a third book, God’s amateur: the writing of E.C. Large, to accompany the reissue of the novels.’