'Lunatic' Work Out

Dear Reader

Like the Trébuchet left on the floor, the exhibition is full of hooks. We are surrounded by walls, and because these walls are translucent and appear to be huge harps, we play them as we play the rest of the works, this material is a screen.

The opening is, as expected, the highlight of the show. There is a bar, tended by two attractive kids, one of them is a friend of the artists. Martijn Hendriks is in the overcrowded gallery drinking a beer and discussing works with the artist Gert Jan Kocken. As Lutz-Kinoy enters the exhibition he is handed a small bouquet of purple tulips, his upper half is wet with water, the flowers are from Vela Arbutina. Martijn is now holding one of the spotlights from the exhibition, now pointing it onto Matthew, the tulips are wilting and scattering across the floor. The song ends and fades into a mix by WATTVR.

The skylights of the exhibition space have been removed and the crowd is moving in from the street; the wood and rope dividers are visible over their heads. The exhibition is a social garden. Beer bottles are placed on top of pedestals; handbags and coats, draped over sculptures, we are near the Dam Square, we are at the plaza. Public urinal and bench proposals, objects that propose utilitarian functions are rendered decorative, their glossy finishes expose a veneer of disinterest. We are now in the process of proposing an urban future esthetic, one which actually reflects and services its public. At the far end of the exhibition space a small street lamp projections onto a white board leaning against the wall, depicting digitized sculpture and painting options. These same attempts through abstraction that project themselves into the room remain as a surface. The rotating digital image sits closely to its neighboring shadows on the wall, meaning is defined by artificial light, we are in the cave, the simulacrum. Inside of Plato’s historic home there are plenty of places to leave your coat, in fact the W139’s Platonic cave is a cloak room, a series of hooks, over which your winter spring jacket could hang. I can recommend this show for its finissage, do attend.

Sunday afternoon
During this last late afternoon Tim Voss will give a short introduction, Martijn Hendriks will introduce his text „beside itself“, Rick Dolphijn will highlight features of his soon to be published book on new materialism, and curator Elena Filipovic will share a film depicting the work of Polish scultor Alina Szapocznikow. There is also plenty of time to converse with the audience and guests about connections between the works on show. Matthew Lutz-Kinoy will recite this press release and present his new time based sculpture “dedicated to the concept of full integration / merged opportunities GMF, Boom, Dinner Party”.

Elena Filipovic

Elena Filipovic is a writer, art historian, and curator at WIELS Contemporary Art Centre, Brussels. She co-curated the 5th Berlin Biennial (2008) with Adam Szymczyk, and co-edited The Biennial Reader: Anthology on Large-Scale Perennial Exhibitions of Contemporary Art (2010) with Marieke van Hal and Solveig Øvstebø. She has curated a number of historic retrospectives, including Marcel Duchamp: A Work that is not a Work of “Art” *(2008-2009), *Felix Gonzalez-Torres. Specific Objects without Specific Form (2010-2011) and Alina Szapocznikow: Sculpture Undone, 1955-1972, co-curated with Joanna Mytkowska (2011-2012), in addition to organizing solo exhibitions with artists such as Klara Lidén, Lorna Macintyre, Melvin Moti, Tomo Savic-Gecan, and Tris Vonna-Michell, and group shows including The Other Tradition (2010), Anachronism (2007), and Let Everything Be Temporary (2007). She is guest curator for the Prix Ricard, Paris (2012), was guest curator of the Satellite Program at the Jeu de Paume, Paris (2010) and has, since 2007, been tutor of theory/exhibition history at De Appel postgraduate curatorial training program and advisor at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam. Her writings have appeared in numerous artists’ catalogues as well as Afterall, frieze, Kaleidoscope, and Mousse.

Rick Dolphijn

Rick Dolphijn is professor at the Media and Culture Studies department of Utrecht University. He is interested in materialism, continental philosophy and (media) ecology. Dolphijn writes for journals such as Collapse, Deleuze Studies, Fast Capitalism, and together with Iris van der Tuin in Women; a Cultural Review, and Continental Philosophy Review. Within a few months his book New Materialism (in collaboration with Iris van der Tuin) will be published with Open Humanaties Press, within the series New Metaphysics of Bruno Latour and Graham Harman.