Anne Turyn
Top Stories
April 2 – June 26, 2021

Too Good To Be Entirely True
Words In Reverse
3 Stories
Agent Pink
Foot Facts
This is My Mother. This is my Father.
Eating Friends
Transcript
New York City in 1979
Living with Contradictions
Marie
Shattered Romance
Real Family Stories
95 Essential Facts
I.T.I. L.O.E
Analects of Self-Contempt/Sweet Cheat of Freedom
The Human Heart
Forget About Your Father
How To Get Rid Of Pimples
Red Moon/Red Lake
The Colorist
FIVE
Tourist Attractions
Extremes Of High and Low Regard
War Comics
Pecunia Olet

Well now. 

Kunstverein is thrilled to –finally– welcome you to Top Stories, the first exhibition in The Netherlands to give full attention to the identically titled prose periodical set-up, edited, designed and distributed by Anne Turyn between 1978 and 1991.

Top Stories started in the late 1970s under the auspices of the venue Hallwalls (Buffalo, New York) where, at the time, Turyn was co-programming performances and readings. It later moved to New York in the early 1980s along with its founder. With these publications Turyn specialised in giving space to the writing of one young female author (and those who identify themselves as such) in her network, forecasting some of the most progressive writers of the 80s and 90s such as Kathy Acker, Laurie Anderson, Constance DeJong, Jane Dickson, Pati Hill, Jenny Holzer, Mary Kelly, Cookie Mueller, Linda Neaman, Lynne Tillman and Gail Vachon, and often featured visual contributions by artists such as David Armstrong, Joe Gibbons, Nan Goldin, Peter Hujar, Gary Indiana, Richard Prince and Leslie Thornton. 

Since many of the stories are of an auto-fictional nature, the twenty-nine-odd issues function today as a direct gateway into the mood and network of the New York scene at the time. They give us a glimpse into the cradle of the writers’ later careers as well as a direct take on how second-wave feminism and the fight for equal rights and social equality—regardless of sex—impacted their daily life and thoughts. Cumulatively, the issues shine a light on how important it is—still—for independent chapbooks, small presses and spaces to exist. They are a beacon for fostering and developing legroom for voices that are left unheard on the main stage and propel change.

We are proud to share that we have acquired a rare, complete, first edition set of the Top Stories series for Kunstverein’s collection, and you are invited to come and browse, smell, read and touch the material for yourself. Accompanying the shelved Top Stories is a newly commissioned two-channel film by experimental filmmaker—and longtime friend of Turyn—Peggy Ahwesh. The film unpacks Turyn’s extensive archive and leads us past ephemera and long forgotten notes that serve as time stamps for the relationships and know-how that were there to make the series work.

Parallel to the show we will also be publishing a very limited number of copies of Tense, a never realized publication by Lucy Lippard and Jerry Kearns from 1984. This issue was originally intended to become a Top Stories but never was. It will be launched now during Amsterdam Art Weekend, near the end of the show.

Photo credit group portret: May 13, 1983, Artists Space, NYC by Laurie Neaman

Cauleen Smith
Bronze Icebergs
10 October – 23 December 2020
Opening Saturday, October 10, 5–9pm

‘The possible has been tried and failed. Now it’s time to try the impossible.’ – Sun Ra

Please join us on October 10, between 5 and 9pm, for the soft opening of Bronze Icebergs, an exhibition by artist and filmmaker Cauleen Smith. This show marks the Los Angeles-based artist’s first solo exhibition in the Netherlands and brings together a new series of drawings, a film and a flag designed especially for the occasion.

On Friday, July 3, at the *very* precarious moment in which the Covid-19 death toll in the US had recently surpassed one hundred thousand people and when millions, despite the dangers, were taking to the streets enraged by the relentless (police) brutality and injustice against people of colour, a news notification popped up on screens across the globe. It announced that a presidential executive order had just been signed by the US president that condemned the destruction of monuments and called for the building of a national garden that would feature the statues of ‘Our American Heroes’. The definition of ‘our’ couldn’t be more at stake. The executive order came as yet another sadly unsurprising and vile response from Trump to the toppling of monuments across countries.

Such an action has, at different moments, served as a physical and symbolic public exfoliation ritual for many when distancing themselves from ideas and individuals that they no longer want to be associated with (or never even identified with in the first place). The most recent toppling of bronze was a long-overdue reminder that it is truly time we reckon with our colonial pasts and rise up to the demand to acknowledge the existing conditions of inequity within our societies, and to do so as a community.

Smith’s work, which often takes shape across various forms, is grounded in the imaginary possibilities of the moving image and seeks to propose an alternate future through speculative narratives. And this moment we are living through calls for just that: the healing power of reimagining.
In the forty-six drawings on display at Kunstverein, Smith manipulated the official announcement by inserting the names of significant Black female activists and cultural figures as well as moments of insurgent uprisings that are commonly written out of history.
By repeating, revising, filling in and marking language from the executive order document—and pairing it with images and names of various violently extracted and mined mountains, icebergs, prairies and rivers—Smith lays bare the harmful practice of erasure in relation to cultural significance and the standards of who, or what, is deemed as such. But in doing so, she also points to the transformative potential of rewriting collective memory through the work of revolutionary thinkers and events—ones that have changed our political realities yet have been unjustifiably overlooked.

Juxtaposed with a flag affixed to the exterior of Kunstverein and the film Lessons in Semaphore (which captures a choreographed movement with flags whereby a performer communicates through visual signals), this new series asks how these acts of revisioning help refigure our relationship to threatened environments and undo the destructive heroisation of figures who too quickly have been cast in bronze.

Kunstverein would like to thank AFK and its members for their continued support.

Ah! All of a sudden it’s ten o’clock and still light, still hot and, well, summer. And we were wondering: Does this really count as a season in a year that has already skipped one? Are we allowed, as a cultural body, to slow down in the heat of this specific moment? To rub our physical bodies with SPF20 and protect them (more) just because we are in the luxurious position to do so?

These questions form the central axis for this year’s annual Summer Res(t)idency which recommences on August 1. This third edition welcomes Matilda Kenttä who will be toiling away while the rest of us aren’t. Kenttä, a very *very* recent graduate from the Gerrit Rietveld Academie’s textile department will install a loom in the frame of Kunstverein’s window. While the days grow shorter again Kenttä will be reshuffling the silver curtain currently casting shade on our space into rags. Although her labour is hers, it will not be solitary. Until August 31 Kunstverein’s physical space will turn into an occasional meeting place (call it a bar) for friendly gossip (as the term was understood in the eleventh century, then meaning friend), questioning who, really, has the right to be lazy? Stories bypassers spin will be interwoven into the fabric, which after summer will filter into kitchens and households.

September welcomes a solo exhibition by Cauleen Smith, initiated by our associate curator Suzy Halajian. Halajian, who was selected out of ninety-four candidates worldwide, will bring her voice to Kunstverein’s program by developing two projects annually. This is the first. The Los Angeles-based curator’s interests lie at the intersection of art and politics, looking at how images are made and consumed in relation to our colonial pasts and modern surveillance states. Previously, Halajian has curated exhibitions and programs for, among others, the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, the Armory Center for the Arts, and Sursock Museum (Beirut). Halajian has also been an integral part of the curatorial team at the artist-run space Human Resources (LA) since 2015 and—together with Anthony Carfello and Shoghig Halajian—is the co-founder of the journal Georgia.

We hope to see your sun-kissed faces then, if not sooner!
Kunstverein

Anne Turyn
Messages To The Public
18 May – 27 June 2020
Public space (accessible 24/7)

As a prelude to our forthcoming exhibition TOP STORIES, the first institutional solo exhibition by Anne Turyn in the Netherlands (which due to the corona outbreak has been postponed until the fall), we are bringing one of Turyn’s enigmatic works to the streets and inviting you to go for a walk. On nine specifically selected poster columns located throughout Amsterdam, large-scale prints of the artist’s 1988 commission Messages To The Public will be shown.

The exact locations can be found here.

Anne Turyn, What if the sky were orange, 1988
Computer animation, Spectacolor lightboard, One Times Square, Sept. 1–30, 1988

This work was originally presented in digital form on the Spectacolor board overlooking Times Square in New York, and was part of a larger series of works commissioned by the Public Art Fund. In Turyn’s piece, rhetorical questions like: ‘What if everyone had a home?’, ‘What if there were free medical service for all?’ and ‘What if there were no lines at the bank?’ flashed up. In re-staging an adapted form of this work now, it has become even more evident that such questions are (unfortunately) today, almost forty years later, still topical, timely and largely unsolved.

Who’s Werner?
23 November – 21 December 2019

Opening: 22 November, 5–9pm

Who’s Werner? is a spacial conversation that explores artistic practices that have become intertwined and focuses on the role of a figure whose work is commonly kept a public secret. It looks into some mutualistic relationships between artists in various disciplines and their assistants; producers; sometimes lovers. The exhibition reveals some of the misconceptions that exist around how a piece of art is made and the structures that keep those misconceptions intact, offering a telescopic view onto larger issues of ‘place’, equality of partnerships, sex and race.

The show includes works where it is difficult to tear apart who brought in what piece of the puzzle… by and for; Céline Condorelli, Denise Scott Brown, Elle Burchill, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Raoul De Keyser, James Langdon, John Baldessari, Jonas Mekas, Lucy Skaer, Margot Sandeman, Norman Laich, Paul Robbrecht, Robert Venturi, Simon Harlow, Jan-Philipp Hopf, Laura Kaminskaitė, and serves as a prefix of the methodologies and interests of Kunstverein’s new director Yana Foqué, who has followed up Maxine Kopsa since September of this year. The topic explored within this exhibition will extend into Kunstverein’s program of the following years.

Kunstverein wishes to thank its (Gold) members, Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst, the Jonas Mekas Estate (Sebastian Mekas), Margot Sandeman Estate (Peter & David Robson), Ian Hamilton Finlay Estate (Pia Simig), Grimm Gallery (Sebastiaan Brandsen), Joan Hughson Gallery, Marian Goodman (Kristina Pallova, Lauren Sher), the Lithuanian Cultural Council and CAC Vilnius for their support.

Salon Hang
13 September – 2 November 2019
Opening: 12 September, 7 pm

With:

Kunstverein wishes to thank its (Gold) members, Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst and Neef Louis Design for their support.

AND THEN…

I listen, listen, listen, I listen and remember, that
everything I have to say, transforms

her* rhythm into
my speech.

Polyvibrations
Poly-vibrations
Po-ly-vi-bra-tions

All the time,
my story is evolving, interdependent and always alive**.

Kunstverein is happy to once more host Sandberg’s Fine Art Department’s annual Festival of Choices presenting ‘Collective Recollections’ by Tina Reden.

With ‘Collective Recollections’ Tina Reden zooms in on the task of listening and remembering as a strategy to break open the modern notion of a singular narrative and chronology. She explores the political possibility of polyphonic sound and imagines a collaborative world that connects voices through time and space. The exhibition will be open to the public daily from June 13 until June 16, between 12 and 6pm,

Additionally, on Saturday June 15, 1–4pm Reden, Francisca Khamis and Davide Sanvee invite you to take part in a workshop further exploring our collective memory based upon the sharing and mixing of stories by participants. The workshop offers an alternative experience of knowledge – not neutral, but plural – and in an interdependent relationship to others, allowing a passage, a crossing and intermingling between and across differences. To attend this workshop please announce your attendance to tina.reden@gmail.com (rsvp – max. 20 people)

Between 4–6pm following the workshop taking place on June 15, there will be a Public Moment with a chance to visit the exhibition in presence of the artist. Drinks will be served.

*‘Her’ as in the manifold, infinite other, in the middle of either or, ambiguous, threatening by the very ambiguity the orderliness of the system of schematized reality.
**This tekst was written by reverberating quotes by; Pauline Oliveros, Zora Neale Hurston, Fred Moten, Luisah Teish, Sun Ra, Maria Lugones,

Zapp Magazine
26 January – 16 March 2019
Opening: 26 January, 7–8 pm (following the members only preview starting at 6 pm)

Mr. Peanut
Opening 13 October, 6–8 pm
On view until 1 December

I would like to take this opportunity to endorse the candidacy of Mr. Peanut for mayor of Vancouver. Mr. Peanut is running on the art platform, and art is the creation of illusion. Since the inexorable logic of reality has created nothing but insolvable problems, it is now time for illusion to take over. And there can only be one illogical candidate – Mr. Peanut.
– William S. Burroughs

Mr. Peanut… Mr. Peanut…. we know what you’re thinking: not another white man in a peanut suit.

But it’s 1974.

(Again)

And he’s running for mayor.

And, imagine. Really. Close your eyes and picture it. He doesn’t speak, he taps, he poses, he passes.

2,684 people vote for the big tap dancing peanut.

What does this say about politics, then?

And – tell us honestly – when, just now, you closed your eyes, and you saw him not in black and white, but full color, with his cane and his top hat, could you imagine yourself NOW, today, tomorrow, going into that voting booth and with your big red pencil ticking off the box next to the name “Mr. Peanut”?

Tell us.

Mr. Peanut… Not just another nut in politics.

“Borderline Case” photo Morris/Trasov Archive

Vincent Trasov became Mr. Peanut in 1971. It all started when he was making drawings of Mr. Peanut tap dancing for a stop motion film for the cultural platform Intermedia, and, finding the task tedious, decided to make a life-sized costume instead, one in which he could simply tap dance himself, animating the real thing and skirting the drawing process. The name Mr. Peanut stuck.

He was in good company. Like many artists in Vancouver connected with the then recently founded art institution, The Western Front (founded in 1973 and ongoing), working with an alias became the norm. Michael Morris took on “Marcel Dot”, Glenn Lewis, “Flakey Rosehip”, Anna Banana became “Anna Banana”, Eric Metcalfe & Kate Craig were “Dr. & Lady Brute”, A.A. Bronson, Felix Partz & Jorge Zontal became “General Idea” and Chip Lord & Hudson Marquez from San Francisco were “Ant Farm”.

For many of these figures collaboration is crucial. Collaboration and a determined interest in “finding [their] own audiences of like-minded individuals.” This quest was made concrete in 1969 when Trasov and artist Michael Morris developed a decentralized artist network that aimed to connect and exchange with contemporaries, mainly in Canada and the US. They called it Image Bank. People like Ray Johnson, William S. Burroughs and Robert Filiou were inspirational and also supportive – in fact the name “Image Bank” was referenced from William S. Burroughs’ novel “Nova Express” (1964).

In a world serviced relentlessly through social media, Image Bank and Mr. Peanut’s urgency persists. Functioning as practices and methodologies, they remind us of how vital it is to continue to question and circumvent the existing establishments of both art and political institutions.

The exhibition Mr. Peanut traces the history of Trasov’s revolutionary alias and includes historical documents, publications, correspondence, video footage as well as more recent drawings of Mr. Peanut and paintings by Vincent Trasov. A major retrospective on Image Bank will follow in the summer of 2019 at Kunst-Werke in Berlin.

Mr. Peanut has been made possible by the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, University of British Columbia and the Morris/Trasov Archive. Kunstverein wishes to thank the Belkin and their fantastic team, Scott Watson, Michael Morris and Vincent Trasov.

Kunstverein is proud to share with you a complete set of twenty Dial-A-Poem records, published by Giorno Poetry Systems (GPS). We invite you to come and listen to them at the opening of the show DIAL +31 203 313 203 on Saturday 21 April, between 6 and 8pm.

“I certainly won’t curl up in a chair with a book of poetry.” — John Giorno

Dial-A-Poem was a technologically revolutionary poetry service thought up in the late 1960s by artist, activist and poet John Giorno. Inspired by a late night conversation with his friend William S. Burroughs and the recent avant-garde methodologies of (pop) artists like Andy Warhol, Merce Cunningham and John Cage, Giorno created a new model for the distribution of poetry – one that would bring poetry to a larger audience, in a manner that steered away from fatigued traditions of formal readings (a dynamic that most often placed the poet on a page and the audience in a library).

Through his phone service callers would be connected to a web of 12 automatic answering machines and be randomly serenaded by the voices of over 70 artists, including Kathy Acker, Nick Cave, Patti Smith and Charles Bukowski. The selection of poems would change daily and often they would advocate urgent social issue of the time such as the Vietnam War, the Aids Crisis and the sexual revolution. When the phone lines got cut, Giorno moved on to distributing their poetry on vinyl. Under the GPS label he released albums regularly until the late 1980s. Many of these included early recordings by later prominent performers such as Laurie Anderson and Philip Glass as well as unique performances by Frank Zappa, Diamanda Galás, Allen Ginsberg, John Cage and many more.

It’s these albums we now hold in our collection and from April 21 until June 16 we welcome you to come and listen to them on a custom-made carpet designed by Physical Culture (Julie Héneault, Margaux Parillaud, Ursula Marcussen and Line-Gry Hørup).

During the course of the exhibition we will be hosting 3 Evenings on a Revolving Stage*. Three special events where readings will be hosted and shared. In analogy to the projects and with the purpose of distributing the show to as broad an audience as possible, making use of the various mediums at hand, a special radio show will be aired on Redlight Radio on May 28 between 9 and 10 pm. This broadcast, hosted by Yana Foqué and Jo Sandow, gives you the chance to listen to the Dial-A-Poem Poets from the comfort of your own home.

Or call us at +31 203 313 203.

* the title 3 Evenings on a Revolving Stage is borrowed from the similarly titled series of performance nights organised by Jean Depuy at the Judson Church in New York in 1976. To these evenings he invited artists that overlapped with the Dial-A-Poem Poets.

Now here’s a story.

While Joe Gibbons himself is landlocked, his exhibition Drawings from Rikers will open to the public at Kunstverein on Friday February 16, from 6–8pm (following the members only preview). And although Gibbons himself can’t join us in person for the night of the opening, we certainly hope you will.

The catalogAvailable at Kunstverein is the book Drawings from Rikers edited by Maika Pollack, designed by Almog Cohen-Kashi and published by Object Relations (2017). It contains all of Gibbons’ drawings from Rikers, an extensive interview with Tony Oursler, and an introduction by former Curator of Collections at Anthology Film Archives, Andrew Lampert.

Evening screeningsAndrew Lampert has curated a selection of films by Joe Gibbons especially for Kunstverein, to be screened during the exhibition. More about location and dates will follow in a separate invitation. So keep your eyes open!

Joe Gibbons’ work has been exhibited at numerous institutions including the Museum of Modern Art in NY, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Centre Pompidou, and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid, Spain. His work has been chosen for the Whitney Biennial in 1993, 2000, 2002 and 2006, and is regularly programmed at the NY Video Festival, the Rotterdam Film Festival, and the Black Maria Film and Video Festival. His films have been broadcast in Spain, France and Germany as well as on PBS. He has collaborated on performances, films and videos with artists Tony Oursler, Karen Finley, Tony Conrad, and Emily Breer.

Kunstverein wishes to thank its (Gold) members, Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst and Ammodo for their support, and sends a special thank you to the artist, Maika Pollack (Southfirst Gallery, New York), Andrew Lampert and, of course, the Friends of Joe Gibbons.

To Whom It May Concern:

Anna Banana is a project that explores the historical and contemporary implications of mail art and highlights a unique approach to humour, disguise, and the democratic potential of print media and critique. The show will feature Anna Banana’s artist stamps, mailers, postcards, posters, and costumes made over a forty-five year period.

Anna Banana is a historical overview, yet an urgent and contemporary response to our current socially saturated and mediated world. It a meaningful show for Kunstverein, that continues our co-operation with significant Canadian conceptual artists (Kunstverein worked with Glenn Lewis in the past and will work with Image Bank in the near future.)

Kara Hamilton, founding director of Kunstverein Toronto, has initiated this important retrospective of Anna Banana’s long art practice.* The exhibition will travel from Toronto to Amsterdam in October.

There will be an artist walk-though and preview (members only) at 5 pm prior to the official opening on October 21st at 6 pm.

Anna Banana runs until January 13th 2018.

Sincerely,

Kunstverein, Amsterdam

*Following in the mighty footsteps of Anna Banana: 45 Years of Fooling Around with A. Banana, The Art Gallery of Greater Victoria and Open Space Arts Society (2015), Pratt Institute Libraries (2016)

Salon Hang
9 April – 10 June 2017
Members preview: Saturday 8 April 6 pm
Opening: Saturday 8 April 7 pm

Kunstverein: “See something that means something.”

It’s time to renew our vows.
Start fresh.
Re-kindle.

We’re not going to Hawaii. We’re staying in Amsterdam, but we’re holding the ceremony at our new location. We enter together the pink and blue living room of a Hollywood ex-porn star. Think gold, shag, keyboards, candles; think domestic pleasures, salon tenderness.

Welcome to this year’s members-only Salon Hang.

Ed van der Elsken, Taipeh (poster), 1973. Nederlands Fotomuseum. © Ed van der Elsken. Courtesy Annet Gelink Gallery.

Please join in a feast of you and your things; your pictures, objects, books, magazines, records, vases, pieces of strange cutlery, odd watches, paintings, and anything zebra. In a place transformed into a plush, domestic residence where one can sit and listen to live music, recitals, poetry readings, and drink and talk amidst a variety of artworks.

Kunstverein’s Salon Hang “brings together, unifies, weds, and combines the sacred with the profane, the lofty with the low, the great with the insignificant, the wise with the stupid.” (Andy Warhol)

Salon Hang marks a very special time of year: the time to celebrate its members*. Please welcome, amongst others: Gediminas Akstinas, Maria Barnas, David Bernstein, Marja Bloem, Ansuya Blom, Tim Braden, Sarah Crowner, Valentina Desideri, JL Diantus, Experimental Jetset, Maartje Fliervoet, Hreinn Fridfinnsson, Laurent-David Garnier, gerlach en koop, Melissa Gordon, Roos Gortzak, Krist Gruijthuijsen, Rudy Guedj, Kara Hamilton, Will Holder, Marc Hollenstein, Juliette Jongma, Mathew Kneebone, Germaine Kruip, Lieven Lahaye, Jungmyung Lee, Gabriel Lester, Glenn Lewis, Matthew Robert Lutz-Kinoy, Raimundas Malašauskas, SL Martinez, Mevis & Van Deursen, Maureen Mooren, Lisa Oppenheim, Will Peck, Adam Pendleton, Michael Portnoy, Alexander Ramselaar, Nerijus Rimkus, Smári Runar Róbertsson, Scott Rogers, Christine Roland, Benjamin Roth, Beatrix Ruf, Glenn Ryszko, Lotte Schröder, Maaike Schoorel, Dexter Sinister, Gijs Stork, Claes Storm, Berend Strik, Jay Tan, Angelo Tromp, Nora Turato, Andy Warhol, Felix Weigand, Wieske Wester invited by Dürst Britt Mayhew, Riet Wijnen, Robert Wilhite, Luc Windaus, Geo Wyeth, Bruno Zhu …

Piss On The Electric Fence – Smári Róbertsson

*Kunstverein is a space that crosses culturally varied ground, on an intimate, ambitious, and domestic level. Kunstverein is a not-for-profit organization, which, through the support of its members, creates a community that endorses a distinct program. By being a member of Kunstverein you stake a claim to wanting to “see something that means something.” As a member, you participate in KV’s program, receiving priority for limited seating at events, special previews, access to members only happenings (like Salon Hang), discounts on publications, and other cultural benefits.

Kunstverein wishes to thank its (Gold)members and we are extremely happy to announce the support of Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst, as well as Ammodo.

Noa Eshkol
I Look at the Moon and Think about My Daughter-in-Law
4 February – 19 March

A joint solo exhibition at Vleeshal and Kunstverein

Kunstverein
Hazenstraat 28, 1016 SR
Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Member’s preview & walk-through at Kunstverein: February 3, 5 pm
Film screening at Kunstverein: February 4, 4 pm

When looking closely at a hand turning a doorknob, a “rotary movement” is observed, very different from the motion one would witness of jumping jacks, which are considered the result of a “plane movement,” and certainly unlike the perceived effort of a waist circling inside a hula-hoop. How do we define one movement from the next, and how do we preserve them in time, in order perhaps to redo them one after the other?

Kunstverein, together with Vleeshal (Middelburg), is excited to present a joint solo exhibition in two parts: ‘I Look at the Moon and Think about My Daughter-in-Law’ – on the work and thinking of contemporary dancer, choreographer, carpet maker and theorist Noa Eshkol (IL, 1924–2007).

In the 1950s, Noa Eshkol, together with architect Avraham Wachman, developed a notational system for movement, which uses a combination of symbols and numbers to define the motion of any limb around its joint. The Eshkol Wachman Movement Notation (EWMN) system, named after its developers, was born out of a social practice and way of life, as much as it was a visual means of representing (human) motion. The system offers a way of looking at the movements of the body, by organizing them in relatively simple categories making it possible to notate and thus reactivate motion, precisely and mathematically, at a later time.

Please join us on Saturday February 4 for the opening of ‘I Look at the Moon and Think about My Daughter-in-Law.’ There, the first copy of the EWMN system will be on view, as well as a generous selection from the historic archives (curated by Maya Pasternak with research assistance by Mor Bashan). Kunstverein will also present the first ever screening of an early performance by the Noa Eshkol Chamber Dance Group exercising the system. And a chameleon balancing on a branch.

The films will be screened on the window of Kunstverein’s storefront in the heart of the Jordaan, enabling both viewers inside and outside the space to be engulfed by the hypnotizing dances. Drinks will be served.

The exhibition will be open Thursday to Saturday 1–6 pm or by appointment from 4 February to 19 March 2017.

The exhibition at Vleeshal opens with performances by The Noa Eshkol Chamber Dance Group on January 21, at 5 pm and workshops takes place on January 22. For more information on how to attend the workshops please visit www.vleeshal.nl

Kunstverein wishes to thank its (Gold) members, Stadsdeel Zuid, and Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst, and Ammodo as well as the Noa Eshkol Foundation for Movement Notation and Anja Casser for their foundational work on the previous exhibition of Noa Eshkol’s Wall Carpets and archival material which took place at the Badischer Kunstverein, Germany.

‘A Clocktower in the Eye’
By Alex Waterman

Kunstverein is excited (and proud) to announce a special one night only performance deep in the South of Amsterdam.

On Thursday November 17, at 7.30 p.m. please join us in the midst of the Beatrix Park in the historic and monumental Kunstkapel, to listen to a set of compositions by Alex Waterman that explore the relationship between musical composition and the social construction of landscapes, whilst simultaneously searching for a place in and outside of these landscapes for the feelings that constitute us whilst always already undoing us: grief, loss, and desire.

Special location: Kunstkapel, Pr. Irenestraat 19, 1077 WT Amsterdam
Doors open at 6.30 p.m. performance starts at 7.30 p.m.
Tickets are €5 for non-members; members go free
Please reserve your tickets via office@kunstverein.nl.

Alex Waterman is a composer, performer, and scholar based in New York. His pieces are composed from found sounds and field recordings, often played back and re-recorded through early forms of recording devices and media (phonographs, homemade Berliner gramophones, cassette tapes, micro cassettes, etc.) or by attaching transducers to the back of the corpus of his instrument – transforming the cello into another speaker in the room.

Alex studied cello with Andor Toth, Catherina Meints, George Neikrug, and Frances Marie Uitti. He was a founding member of the Plus Minus Ensemble, based in Brussels and London. In New York he has performed and recorded extensively with the Either/Or Ensemble. Alex has worked with musicians and artists such as Robert Ashley, Helmut Lachenmann, Marina Rosenfeld, Anthony Coleman, Ned Rothenberg, Elliott Sharp, Miya Masaoka, David Watson, Chris Mann, George Lewis, Alison Knowles, Thomas Meadowcroft, Beatrice Gibson, Peter Gordon, Ned Sublette, Elio Villafranca, Shannon Ebner, Wayne Koestenbaum, Amy Sillman, Michael Schumacher, and E.S.P. TV. His installation works have been exhibited at the ICA London, Stonescape, Vilma Gold, Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, Printed Matter, the Bonnefantenmuseum, and the Whitney Museum. His book on Robert Ashley, written and edited by Waterman and Will Holder, was released by New Documents in September 2014. He has produced two other books with Will Holder: Agape and Between Thought and Sound. Waterman was an artist in the 2014 Whitney Biennial where he built a television studio, and installation space inside the museum in order to produce 3 operas by Robert Ashley. He has taught at Bard College (MFA program), NYU, Bloomfield College, and the Banff Centre for the Arts. He is currently Visiting Assistant Professor of Music at Wesleyan University. His writings appear in Dot Dot Dot, Artforum, Brooklyn Rail, BOMB, A Circular, and The Third Rail.

Kunstverein wishes to thank its (Gold) members, Stadsdeel Zuid, and Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst.

15 October – 17 December 2016
Preview 14 October, 5–7 pm

This exhibition takes place at a special location:
Hazenstraat 28, 1016 SR Amsterdam

is an exhibition of twenty years of Will Holder’s work with publications, talks, printed matter, and teaching presented through individual selections by nine different guests: Sara de Bondt, Linda van Deursen, Johanna Ehde, Elisabeth Klement, Maxine Kopsa, Kaisa Lassinaro, Mason Leaver-Yap, Riet Wijnen and Felicia von Zweigbergk. The main purpose of the exhibition is to make a book. Using Kunstverein as space for writing, printing and binding – Will Holder will recall hundreds of tiny material decisions made in response to a specific context of past collaborators’ work. The book will be self-published and printed on demand, and is called

Visitors are welcome to look through the archive, view the weekly presentations and order a copy of STAPLES (EUR 15, excl. postage). STAPLES will be printed and hand bound on demand on the premises. Each copy potentially different in content.

STAPLES will be the first catalog of Will Holder’s work and will also be the first book published by a (“uh”) books, Glasgow – an initiative of Will Holder with Emmie Mcluskey.

Kunstverein wishes to thank its (Gold) members, Stadsdeel Zuid, and Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst.

Jessica Warboys, Angle Pose
17 April – 10 June 2016

Opening: 17 April 3–6 pm
With a special performance by Morten Norbye Halvorsen at 5pm.

For Kunstverein, Jessica Warboys creates an all-emersive mise-en-scene, marrying large scale (sea) paintings, bent metal lamps, sculptural objects and film. The viewer experiences the exhibition from the spine of an enforced catwalk running down the middle of the space.

Hans de Vries ‘Works 1968–1975’
23 January – 19 March 2016

Opening 23 January 6–8 pm

With a new publication published by Kunstverein Publishing
Partner: Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam
Curated by Krist Gruijthuijsen

Hans de Vries concentrated on the study and registration of processes and appearances that occur in and are created by nature. De Vries was a close observer, an onlooker, an eyewitness, whose aim was to discern and document the relationship between man and his natural environment. His practice has been referred to as “micro-emotive art”, a term coined by the Italian artist Piero Gilardi. Micro-emotive art was art that arose from the interest in minimal sensations and experiences (micro-emotions) –the results of slow processes otherwise not readily perceived.

De Vries’s practice was fully integrated in his daily life. He lived in the countryside and registered every detail of his domestic existence. Developments in nature were studied and phenomena one might consider superfluous, were highlighted. This accumulation of facts and observations has been captured in his publications – the artist books of Hans de Vries.

His first book, Het Tuinboek, [The Garden Book] was published in 1971 as part of the Atlas voor een nieuwe metropool [The Atlas For a New Metropole], edited by Jan Donia and published by the Rotterdam Fund For the Arts. Een jaar rond: huiselijke activiteiten en het weer [A Full Year: Domestic Activity and the Weather], Hilversum, Becht, 1971, was published with the help of collectors Agnes en Frits Becht. An example of a self-published book is Kruisingen [Intersections] published in 1973 in Finsterwolde. These publications were only distributed in galleries (like Seriaal) in Amsterdam.

The illustrated De geschiedenis van de citroengeranium [The History of a Citrus Geranium] was published in 1973 by Art Animation in Groningen. This book was the result of a close study of a Citrus Geranium De Vries and his wife, Emmy, initiated in September of 1970. The artist book Stijgbeelden van vruchten [Growth Images of Fruits] is a folder with an original photograph published alongside the exhibition of the same title in the print gallery of the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag in 1975.

Het Dooie beestenboek [The Dead Animal Book] published by De Harmonie Amsterdam a year before Stijgbeelden van vruchten, is the first book that was available in Dutch bookstores. It is a registry of all the dead animals he and his wife came across in 1971 on their way to Winschoten from their home town, Beerta in the north of the Netherlands. This publication’s design reflects De Vries’s manner of working: showing things as they are, plainly, and with little to no formal concern. Het Dooie beestenboek straightforwardly displays each dead animal accompanied by a handwritten text and a sketch of the situation in which it was found.

Hans de Vries ‘Works 1968–1975’ is De Vries’s first exhibition since he stopped producing art at end of the 1970s. It is a retrospective of all the publications and book-related works including parallel articles and essays about his practice.

Kunstverein wishes to thank its (Gold) members, Mondriaan Fonds, Stadsdeel Zuid, and the Agnes & Frits Becht Collection.

Jennifer Tee meets COBRA*
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Pierre Alechinsky, Asger Jorn, Frits Lemaire & Eugène Brands, Jennifer Tee, Raoul Ubac, Reinhoud
In collaboration with The Cobra Museum of Modern Art
November 29, 2015–January 16, 2016

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Book launch of Jennifer Tee’s The Soul in Limbo: ‘Listening to The Soul in Limbo’ November 29, 12–2pm, with live music by Glenn Ryszko, octopus rice triangles & bloody caesars

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Copyright: Frits Lemaire/MAI

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It’s always better to be a little bit hungry
-Agnes Martin

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[Two women sit down at a rectangular table across from one another. Both open their laptops and type in google docs. One makes a ‘zip your mouth’ motion with her right hand. The other nods. The first starts to type. The other follows.]

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Short forms

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If I were a branch

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Awkward poses

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If I were a…The one thing people probably still read is a list.

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How long will it all last?

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I mean, how do we have to go on?

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Yoga

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Sculpture

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[She looks up over the head of her companion, out of the window]

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When the water reflects up onto the trees and you stare at it for a while you make the trees move.

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If yoga could turn into sculpture.

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Breathe, breathe. Breathe towards the belly.

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How do you do that? I always end up just sticking out my belly and hoping the air will find its way down and up.

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A carpet that determines the spacing of movement. No foot stepped out of the rectangle. I remember a grey man doing a grey performance on a grey carpet.

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And the urns, oh the urns.

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The urns that are death but also vessels to hold food, grains and air.

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Next to them, they sit, cross-legged, knees not quite touching the floor. And their hands are open upwards. Their arms stretched high, but their elbows still bent. Welcoming, but awkward.

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[She looks out of the window again]

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Laissez-faire gardening.

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Seasonal curating?

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No. Well, yes. Maybe that would be more interesting.

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Peter Brook talks about the stage the empty stage and if you cross it you assume an audience, or you affect one. I can take an empty space he says and call it a bare stage. A man walks across this empty space whilst someone else is watching him, and this is all that is needed for an act of theatre to be engaged.[1]

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Tee’s work affects. Now there’s a start.

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Tick tock
Tick Tock

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OK. OK.

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*Kunstverein is the proud host of the launch of artist Jennifer Tee’s Monograph ‘The Soul in Limbo’, published in conjunction with her winning the prestigious Cobra Art Prize Amstelveen, and her solo exhibition of the same title, held at The Cobra Museum of Modern Art (24 November 2015 – 21 February 2016). As a means of creating a mise-en-scene for the publication, Kunstverein, together with Jennifer Tee and the Museum have selected historic and lesser-known works from the museum’s collection creating an intimate and perhaps impertinent exhibition. The associations and non-hierarchal, cross-historical pollination between selected works from the Cobra and Tee allow Tee’s work to enter into a conceptual and formal discussion with specific pieces and specific concerns. The selection was based on a definitive parallel that can be drawn between the works of Reinhoud, Brands and Alechinsky and Tee’s, most notably in Tee’s and their study and use of ethnographic sources. As well as the role of the shaman, the magician – which overlaps in all works. A spiritual and expressionist interest in the earlier pieces might even be brought into a conversation with such contemporary thought as Objet Oriented Ontology (OOO), a ‘movement’ that Tee’s work is conceptually connected with.

The event entitled ‘Listening to the Soul in Limbo’ is a performative launch that takes place during Amsterdam Art Weekend, presenting the book through live music and ritual. ‘Listening to The Soul in Limbo’ also marks the opening of the exhibition ‘Jennifer Tee meets Cobra’ at Kunstverein.

[1] Peter Brook, The Empty Space, 1968 (Penguin edition, 2008)

Kunstverein wishes to thank its (Gold) members, Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst, Mondriaan Fonds, and Stadsdeel Zuid.

Hreinn Friðfinnsson
‘I collected personal secrets’, (1972–2015)
12 September – 7 November 2015
Opening: 12 September, 6–8 pm

In the early 1970s, the Icelandic artist Hreinn Friðfinnsson (b. 1943, Iceland) placed an advert in a Dutch art magazine asking people to send him their secrets. By posing as a collector of secrets, the artist would, he thought, allay suspicions that he had any ulterior motive in using or revealing privileged information that might come his way. It is like something from a novel by José Saramago, or an urban myth or rumour. The secret, Friðfinnsson may be telling us, is that there isn’t one. His art, on the other hand, is an invitation to imagine that there might be.

The artist’s work is celebrated for its lyricism and stark poetry that transcends the often-commonplace subjects and materials that the artist uses to create his pieces. Although there is a consistency of theme and a common emotional thread to his art, the media that Friðfinnsson employs are remarkably varied in scale and substance, from photography, drawings and tracings to presentations and installations of sound, texts and ready-mades. Friðfinnnsson often presents found objects with which he interferes as little as possible, creating new works that investigate ideas of the self and of time. He has said that: “Notions of time are always compelling. I read what comes my way about physics and mathematics, but I read as one who is uninitiated. The feeling and the interest in the essence of time is serious, but my dealing with time is not knowledge-based; it is more exploratory and feeling-based”.

Iceland seems a long way from the sophisticated cosmopolitanism. Friðfinnsson, who has lived in the Netherlands for more than 40 years, wants us to appreciate both the culture he comes from, and the larger world in which he finds himself. There is an important lesson in this, especially from someone who has hidden himself somewhere deep down in Amsterdam with rarely a public appearance. His relationship to the world finds itself at the ‘self’. Friðfinnsson is a natural storyteller; hence that most of his works often beg a narrative, or the fabrication of a story, even when there isn’t one.

After 40 years, Friðfinnsson will conclude his “secrets project” for the exhibition at Kunstverein. The accumulated secrets will be used as base for a monochrome painting, which will be on display alongside the advertisements the project had published throughout the years.

Organized by Krist Gruijthuijsen

Kunstverein wishes to thank its (Gold)members, Mondriaan Fonds, and Stadsdeel Zuid.

Dear Maxine,

How is your summer? It’s been a while we haven’t spoke about the upcoming show, so I decided to write you my recent thoughts which are now gathering in a shape of a SHIP.

Let’s start by saying that while understanding darkness as a mutual agreement, I decided to divide my 24 hrs exhibition into two time periods – day and night and start the whole with an invitation to the darkness of the “Mid Manhattan Library”. The performance can be seen as the trial of the hypothesis of the philosopher Empedocles, which states that light is a product of the human eye. In the fifth century BC, he postulated that everything – all matter – was composed of the four elements: fire, air, earth and water. He also believed that Aphrodite made the human eye out of them and lit the fire, which shone out from the eye making sight possible.

Empedocles knew that things were somewhat more complicated than this, and guessed there was an interaction between rays from the eyes and rays from a source such as the sun. The audience of the performance is invited to the live try-out of the hypothesis, during which they listen to the narrator retelling the floor plan of the PC Lab in the Mid Manhattan Library.

I think of this work as a way to participate in a usual state of mind – to be in two places at the same time. I also see it as a real time extension of one of the infrastructures, underlining how libraries are places of shared knowledge and manufacturing.

Did you know that public libraries in the US are investing in 3-D printing machines now, so people can use them easily and less expensively? I read about a team of doctors, who wanted to assist the doctors performing the operation, but ordering a replica of the boy’s skull would have taken two to three weeks and cost about $4,000, so they went to the Chicago Public Library instead, and printed out a replica of the boy’s skull using a 3-D printer. The model of the skull took just 12 hours to make, cost $20 and the surgery was successful.

This reminds me of a cartoon I saw recently, which shows a furious foolish rhetorically asking why we still need libraries, when standing in front of a newly renovated branch of a public library. The picture itself suggests at least several, socially charged answers, one being the Unemployed Man using the Internet connection in order to find a job. This is just one example that brings us back to the bounce between creativity and function, the authority and the extension of infrastructure, which starts from one’s dream, defined by one’s reliances. How do the current social needs disguise themselves and what different shapes and forms are they ready to take?

The dream of the aforementioned Unemployed Man supplements the architecture and the concept of every branch of every public library and becomes a ship travelling from one to another, with variable measurements and weights.

The performance in Kunstverein would be guided by the friend of mine, Antanas Laukaitis, a famous hip hop Dj in Lithuania who goes under the name “Now U Don’t”, and mainly plays 1993-1998 east coast rap and other same school hip-hop music. At the moment I am dealing now with cafe de Duivel and hope that Antanas can dj there in the night-time of the show, thus becoming the main composer of the SHIP.

When it starts to get darker and the performance series finishes, Kunstverein will become an enlightened gallery space, and the visitors will be invited to take a walk out in the city. I am thinking specifically of one spot in Amsterdam, which can only be experienced by knowing of the specific gaps in the infrastructure of town. As for now, I imagine continuing my show with a meeting near the secret entrance to Artis, The Royal Zoo, used by my friends and I to enter and have walks around the zoo on Sunday evenings.

As such, instead of perceiving the shift of day to night as a discipline, I take it as an example and as a metaphor of the shift between private to public, legality and to illegality. As we both know, invisible things are not just overshadowed by the darkness of the night. Therefore, I think of the gaps in the infrastructure, as independent aestheticized forms.

Meanwhile, Kunstverein will become a bleached-out space containing a few objects: including remains and props of the Mid Manhattan Library performance, such as open cinema tickets as well us amorphous plasticine sculptures by artist (my father) Gediminas Akstinas. He made them in 1988, at the same age as me now and so I thought it would be important for him to participate in this show, as another artist, who shares the same body.

The constant presence of collaboration in this show, lead me to think about the flyer and the map of the exhibition, which could have a design provided by one of the widely accessible places in town. For now I am thinking of collaborating with Sonny Falafels, which is just around the corner from Kunstverein and one my favourite fast food stops. I think it would be nice if the flyers of the show could be spread around before the show and interfuse with other flyers, which connect to the mix of entertainment and hardcore labor . During the night, this flyer could also become one of the objects in the show, bleached in the gallery light of Kunstverein.

I have to think of the friction between desire and consent, leisure and labor, imagination and authority. That’s why “SHIP” became my working title, as an open invitation, depending on the speed of economy and the sharing of knowledge. Imagination is our compass, although we don’t own it.

As for now I would love to come to Kunstverein and measure the space. Maybe it would be a good chance to meet? And what is the deadline for the press release? I also wanted to ask you about the printed matter, is it possible for Kunstverein to print the flyers for the show?

Let me know your thoughts.

Very best,
Gediminas

SHIP is an exhibition by Gediminas Akstinas with works by Gediminas Akstinas and Gediminas Akstinas. It takes place from 5 September until 6 September, from 9 am until 9 am, at Kunstverein and, from midnight, at Cafe De Duivel.

A Studio in Hand-Reading: Charlotte Wolff. A project by Valentina Desideri

23 May – 25 June 2015
Opening: Saturday 23 May, 6–8 pm

Jessica Warboys, Four Lines, 2011

Look at your hand, that tool between a fin and a wing, which developed fingers, a thumb and now grasps and touches everything, real and imaginary. It images the real in its tactile rendering of objects, distances and shapes. It realizes the imaginary by gesturing, approximating thinking through space.

Can I read your hand?

Its surface, gestures and lines offer a complex image that calls for reading. Many readings actually, as each reading is in turn an imaging, a composition, an expression of possibilities.

Jason and Raimundas, Céline, Audrey, Koenraad, Jessica – Can I read your work?

Dr. Charlotte Wolff (1897–1986) read the palms of André Breton, Man Ray, Maurice Ravel, T.S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, Antonin Artaud, Cecil Beaton and Aldous Huxley. She read their character in their hands and their palms also figure in her now rare and exceptional book Studies in Hand-Reading (1936).

But reading always happens between at least two: the reader and what is read – be it books, palms, objects, people, artworks. To engage in this kind of reading together is to engage in study. I propose to gather in the Studio, with books, hands, artworks, coffee and drinks, to read.

On Saturday 23 May
Christian Hawkey will read his poems
On Wednesday 27 May and Thursday 11 June
Annick Kleizen and Valentina Desideri will unravel ways of reading
On Saturday 30 May
Luisa Ungar and Milena Bonilla will read Céline Condorelli’s coffee
On Friday 5 June
Ben Woodard will talk about the relation between gestures and thinking
On Tuesday 16 June
Tim Ingold will discuss lines and making
On Friday 19 June
Stefano Harney will lead us in study
On Thursday 25 June
Denise Ferreira da Silva will talk about notions of reading and imaging

A Studio in Hand-Reading is an exhibition, a studio, a study and a display of artworks and their author’s hands.

Charlotte Wolff (1897–1986): scientist, radical sexologist, chirologist, philosopher, wearer of men’s clothes, psychologist of gesture, lesbian identified* acts as an attractor for topics and ways to read in the Studio.

Valentina Desideri proposes the Studio as a place that generates modes of being together. She will be present in the exhibition throughout the exhibition, inviting participants as well as visitors to gather for reading and in study. This Studio will be the basis for a publication (to be launched at the end of 2015 by Kunstverein Publishing). The exhibition begins with one work by Jason Dodge and Raimundas Malašauskas and a reading by American poet, translator, editor, activist, and educator Christian Hawkey. The show continues to accumulate artworks weekly: following Jason Dodge and Raimundas Malašauskas, Céline Condorelli, Audrey Cottin, Koenraad Dedobbeleer and Jessica Warboys will lend a work and a print of their palms, available for reading in the Studio. The Studio – and its bar – will be open for reading during Kunstverein’s regular opening hours, punctuated by weekly contributions to the study by the invited guests and artists.

*From Christian Hawkey’s N Ear Flowers Re Fre/nd: A Poets’ Play

A Studio in Hand-Reading: Charlotte Wolff. A project by Valentina Desideri

With: Liudvikas Buklys, Céline Condorelli, Audrey Cottin, Mike Cooter, Koenraad Dedobbeleer, Jason Dodge and Raimundas Malašauskas, Denise Ferreira da Silva, Stefano Harney, Christian Hawkey, Tim Ingold, Annick Kleizen, Luisa Ungar and Milena Bonilla, Jessica Warboys and Ben Woodard

Valentina Desideri is an Amsterdam-based artist. She trained in contemporary dance at the Laban Centre in London (2003–2006) and later on did her MA in Fine Arts at the Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam (2011–13). She does Fake Therapy and Political Therapy, she co-organises Performing Arts Forum in France, she speculates in writing with Prof. Stefano Harney, she writes biographies by reading people’s hands, she engages in Poetical Readings with Prof. Denise Ferreira da Silva.

Please follow the updates regarding scheduling for A Studio in Hand-Reading: Charlotte Wolff on this website and on facebook. Weekly invitations will also be sent out to announce forthcoming events.

Much thanks to Stadsdeel Zuid, Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst, Sandberg Instituut, Mondriaan Fonds as well as Kunstverein’s (Gold) members for their generous support.

Salon Hang

Open: 14–28 February
Preview: Saturday 14 February, 6–8 pm

With:

Please join us this Saturday 14 February, for the first annual Members Only Salon Hang.

For the first time in its 5-year history, Kunstverein will be hosting a Salon Hang, open to all and only its esteemed members. The Salon Hang is an exciting out of control event that showcases an abundance of local and international work. At once harking back to the infamous Salons of the past, referencing these full and novel exhibitions that often wrote history, and at the same time, looking forward to what a contemporary art community and self-organization can look like today.

Eau de Cologne
27 September, from 5–10 pm
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Hosted by Gallery Juliètte Jongma and Kunstverein.
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With k.i. beyoncé, Bisou de Saddam, Michiel Ceulers and Anthony Salvador, Echo + Seashell, Laurent-David Garnier, Richard John Jones, Nancy Acid, Ana Navas, and introducing I’m With Her Records. Hot dogs by Ron Blaauw.
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Eau de Cologne is an anti-fashion show and a raw punk, fuzz-pop festival.
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Eau de Cologne takes its name from Monika Sprüth’s radical female only in-house gallery magazine by the same title, published only three times between 1985–1993.
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Line-up
5 pm Ana Navas, around Gerard Douplein and at Kunstverein
———-–Michiel Ceulers and Anthony Salvador, at Juliètte Jongma
———–Laurent-David Garnier, in Bob’s Your Uncle
———–k.i. beyoncé, on Gerard Douplein
———–I’m With Her Records, in I’m With Her Records
7 pm Richard John Jones, on Gerard Douplein
8 pm Echo + Seashell, on Gerard Douplein
9 pm Bisou de Saddam unplugged, in Bob’s Your Uncle
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Thanks to Stadsdeel Zuid and Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst as well as Kunstverein’s (Gold) members. Special thanks to Monika Sprüth.

Eau de Cologne magazines
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5 September – 4 October 2014
Opening: 4 September 7-9pm
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In February 1983, Monika Sprüth opened her first gallery in Cologne. Advocating the talents of then-emerging artists Jenny Holzer, Barbara Kruger, Cindy Sherman and Rosemarie Trockel, Sprüth countered a “Cologne over-run by male artists” with a gallery focused on women. Emblematic of this perspective is Sprüth’s publishing venture Eau de Cologne: an “effervescent, shape-shifting magazine, featuring almost exclusively women artists and art practitioners – which she published, with accompanying exhibitions, three times between 1985 and 1993”.

The presentation at Kunstverein of these historic publications prefaces the EAU DE COLOGNE event, which will be held on September 27.

Kunstverein wishes to thank its (Gold) members and Stadsdeel Zuid. Special thanks to Monika Sprüth and Ahrend.

Axel Wilhite
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5 September – 4 October 2014
Opening: 4 September 7–9 pm
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Menko is a Japanese children’s game played with small cards (similar to baseball cards) elaborately decorated with samurais and other notable historical figures instead of athletes. Axel Wilhite paints on top of these illustrations, sometimes adding to the original image by adding a hat or a flower to a samurai in warrior stance. On other cards, he completely erases the original image, reducing it to its bare lines and then making it anew. Wilhite began working with Menko cards in Chiba, Japan, where he lived for a year while attending school and studying kendo, the art of Japanese swordsmanship. It helped him deal with loneliness of being in a foreign country. “At first, it was something I did for the benefit of my dorm mates, who were also foreigners in Japan,” he says. “Painting the Menko cards is my way of connecting with Japanese culture.”

Kunstverein wishes to thank its (Gold) members and Stadsdeel Zuid. Special thanks to Ahrend.