zaterdag 22 mei 2010

Graphic Design Festival Breda 8 t/m 30 May 2010







If You Could Collaborate — Job Wouters & Roel Wouters from If You Could


Seminar on Decoding and Graphic Design

On Tuesday, May 25 in line with the Graphic Design Festival Breda 2010 a seminar is organized with presentations of seven designers and scientists from home and abroad. They will go deeper into the Decoding theme of the festival. Using examples from their practice and results from research show them how the increasing digitization influenced and changed the field of the graphic designer.The increasing accessibility of information and the growth of communications has changed the media landscape at a rapid pace. What is the impact on the design profession? How can we be innovative, but also socially responsible to go along? The speakers provide insight into developments such as open source software and DIY hardware. Sharing knowledge and collaborating with other experts is inevitable. Designers are more often directing that process rather than being the producers of the end result.The seminar will be held in the MEZZ,
Dommels Zaal, Keizerstraat 101,
4811 HL Breda.

If you would like to attend the seminar, reserve your tickets quickly. Tickets are € 50,- (students With valid student Ids pay € 25,-). The online Presale has started.
You can buy them here.

The lecturers are: Hans Bouwknegt, LUST Design Studio, Michiel Schuurman, Sven Ehmann, Oliver Vodeb, Luna Maurer and Roel Wouters, Karsten Schmidt.

For more information follow this link

What is Mezz?

Pop Music has become an important part of our contemporary culture is increasingly the attention it deserves. In Breda, Mezz concerts & dance where the heart of all activities within the Pop Culture. Of pop concerts and dance nights to several crossovers.The spectacular building Mezz is not only an eye-catcher in the center of Breda, but it is completely designed to suit the task to staged pop music.


Letterpress: Two of not so high quality images from the GDFB website, Mezz photgraphed by Christian Richters.

donderdag 18 februari 2010

De Fantasiefabriek, Noord-Brabants Museum

So Anything is possible ?

Belief it or not but since as a little kid, the story of Lewis Caroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was read to me, I was a believer and convinced that any sooner of later anything is possible.

Later on when I was happy to see the first manuscript of Alice’s Adventures Underground with the writing and drawings of Lewis Caroll, (Go online to British Library Lewis Caroll and see it youself ) the real power was concealed in the ’animated’ drawings he made aside his writings of impossible realities.
Not long after that, animation movie making was a play to experiment with to make impossible things come true. As a youngster I became quite handy in the art of clipbook animation. Lot’s of girlfriends to be were surprised by my gift of little clipbooks I composed out of a combination of photo collages and drawings in which the impossible thought became true, they fell in love with me... Of course in the things I succeeded in my little clipbooks, real life was a lot bigger burden.

In Nowadays life we have innumerable tools to create the impossible but still there is no other discipline which give so much pleasure as in simple movie animation. Okay, it hard work if you real want to use drawings and stop motion pictures, but even if you are as lazy as I am you still can have a lot of fun creating little booklets with easy simple line drawings.

This exhibition in the Noord Brabants Museum called “De Fantasiefabriek” you get a realy nice impression of the state of the art of the Animation Movie Making in The Netherlands in the Noordbrabant Museum there is a focus on the contribution which is made by animation makers in Brabant. At the opening event in her welcoming speech, Lily Jacobs, Member of the Provincial Executive of Noord Brabant for Economic development and Sustainability introduced the AV-Broker, the new promoter of this industry in Noord Brabant. So I hope Freek van ‘t Ooster will put extra effort in the expansion of talent and quality results in the development and support of this fine submissive tool of transformation to make dream come true. In the high art of movie making all kind of computer animated tools strait out from the toolbox of animation movies helps them to make their filming become as close as possible to reality. Did you see Avatar? Do you play computer games… Life in the second reality is becoming dangerously close to the look and feel of our ordinary daily life reality isn’t it?

But the Art Animation Movie like to of William Kentridge and others still have an other powerful force because they are booby trapped in that twilight zone, not the to seek for real reality but to put a slice in between, not the genuine faked impossible, not genuine real reality but the tricky part in between. Real enough the start you doubting, but drawn in animation to set it apart form daily life.

The Animated movie is everywhere and in abundance that we often accept the animated for real or are even disappointed if we discover that daily life didn’t yet adapt to the world of the animate world. Hmm its still a love story I think. See for your self.


Noord Brabants Museum ‘s Hertogenbosch in show until April 25th 2010. The exhibition ‘De Fantasiefabriek – Animatie in Nederland’ is dedicated to the art of animation movie making in the Netherlands. Over fifty films, unique artwork and ‘making offs’ reveal the quality of Dutch animation, both today and in the past. Artists featured include: Gerrit van Dijk, Paul Driessen, Michael Dudok de Wit, Han Hoogerbrugge, Floris Kaayk, Frodo Kuipers, Patrick Raats and Academy Award 2010 nominee Roelef van den Bergh. The exhibition has been made in partnership with the NIAf, the Netherlands Institute for Animation film in Tilburg


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maandag 16 november 2009

De Hondenmepper, CBK 's-Hertogenbosch

Te Dog-smacker. Stan Wannet succeeds in surprising you with his work again and again. He is surely becoming renown as the artist, who reanimate dead animals with modern techniques. In this art installation again he reanimates dead animals in his special way. Dogs this time! As closed pets to man, the encounter is maybe even more horrific. Inspired by the novel of the known Dutch writer W.F. Hermans: "De God Denkbaar, Denkbaar De God" Stan Wannet depicts the absurdistic and violent scenes from this novel and he translated them in this probably even more alienated kinesthetic art installation, in which he reanimates these dogs to 'life-action' heroes.
The work of Stan Wannet is often quite confronting. Departing of the remains of hares, guinypigs and this time, dogs. Taking the skin and the structure of these animals and filling the reconstructions of their bodies with a lot of electro-technics and robot-technics. In doing so bringing them back to 'live' and let them performe remarkable and unexpected actions. His work does not ease your comfort zones, it goes more or less easely beyond them, presenting you quite an other picture as the images we normaly see about pets like dogs.

In June 2008 Wannet had already attracted our attention, with his contrubutions at the Verbeke Foundation in Kemzeke (Belgium), where he spend six months as an artist in residence. He made a few eye catching contributions to the exhibition "Vision in motion - Motion in vision". Remember the remarkable pair of hares, one writing mathematical formulas and the other working behind a type writer. They were quite intriguing as you can see.

After he had concluded his study at the Art School in 's-Hertogenbosch, Stan Wannet did a degree at the Poly Technics in Eindhoven. Specializing in how to beter master the art of building technical devises and using electro-technics and computerised robot-technics in a more integrated but poetic manner in his art. So if your are in the neighborhood, don't hesitate to go and see his new art installation four yourself. Not in Eindhoven or in Kemzeke this time, but in Stan's own home town 's-Hertogenbosch, at the CBK.

CBK 's-Hertogenbosch, Hekellaan 2, 5211 LX 's-Hertogenbosch. Still on show until 3 January 2010.

The two little video-movies: 1. The Dog-smacker and 2. The pair of extra ordinary Hares.

zaterdag 11 juli 2009

STARTDUST Oude Warande Tilburg

Okay, its summer in Brabant! So if you are sure that's nice weather, just go for a nice walk in the park! This summer Fundament Foundation has realized something catchy in the Oude Warande, Tilburg. They complemented the park with a new paviljon designed by Callum Morton. Is it an artwork of just a teahouse? A place where you can lumber in the shade or snap a white wine on the terras?
From the outside, it only casts reflections as it first appears. But this is only one of the surprises you find in the park this summer. To celebrate the realization of the pavilion, Chris Driessen has curated a exhibition around pavilion of Callum Morton. And as you can see in the following pictures I took, the theme of ‘casting reflections’ is quite close the subject of a lot of the sculptures. Some artists show quite other kind of work, but that’s for you yourself to explore.
I just like to zoom in a bit on the reflections partly casted by the works displayed. In a time of economic downfall, the pavilion of Callum Morton is in my views almost a paraphrase on the tall mirroring banking buildings, we more over see in the citycenters of our larger cities. Over here in the middle of this classic green park it is almost an antagonism, if you connects it’s appearance to that of those glass façade buildings we all know so well as the institutionalized image of power.
But then entering in closer, the surprice will even be bigger…
It’s likely that it is a timemachine in the same time. Mirrors as a disguise. A stubborn bloc, you almost cannot see clear, because it is absorbed by its surroundings, mirroring everything back to you, and then it cloakes something completely different? Already curious enough, Go check and see it for yourself. (No, this next picture is the cabin at the entrance).
And still an other big contrast there is, with this little pavilion a bit further down the lane, where you find the weightless transparent glass building of Dan Graham.
It’s only a few weeks passed, that I spoke with him, on the memorial lecture in homage to the Nordic architect he so admires, Sverre Fehn. On the 5th of June in Venice, Sverre Fehn was the celebrated designer, the architect of the Nordic pavilion in the Giardini Park. Also a quite extraordinary geometric structure, with a few trees enclose in the building.

Something which associates quite easily with the contribution made here in the Warande, by Ugo Rondinone, Pagan Void. Rondinone made especially for the Stardust exhibition a new edition of this earlier work. Amongst a number of trees, he planted geometrically a rectangle of fluorescent yellow painted pebbles. A reference to the ‘sun’? Hm, now the sun reflects even brighter patches in the fluorescent yellow pebble bed.
But still there are other nice things to explore. Statues that generate reflections or try to dissolve themselves in their surroundings. A mirroring surface is a miraculous thing, Jeff Koons already discovered. Small things like the makeover of a parkbench, a thing you easely miss... if you didn't saw the little glimmers in the back of the perforated bench. In the Oude Warande we see small things to forget, like the makeover park bench by Hendrik-Jan Hunneman, or a mysterious boat floating in the pond, by Maria Roosen or the tree tall hide and seek statues of José Pedro Croft in which complete trees disvolves: "I'm not there!"


All kinds of reflections, to puzzle the mind, in the same time as when you are looking at these refreshing examples of contemporary art. Then I haven’t pointed out to you, that there are also a few fairytale figures on higher ground in the park, like Fox and Otter made by Rona Pondick.And there are still others to see. To start this puzzling walk in the park, you almost think instantly that everybody got lost, by calls of the sound sculpure made by Job Koelewijn. No, it’s not the fairytale park of the Efteling your in. That's a bit further down the road near Waalwijk, in Kaatsheuvel. No it’s all to see in De Oude Warande, close to the University Campus in Tilburg. And probably twice as nice. Go and see it for yourself, it is open until 27th of September 2009, but it's surely as nice to visit, during the summer when the sun shines and the temperature under the trees in the forest is cool but not cold.
letterpress: 1. Grotto, Callum Morton; 2. Entree-shop; 3,4,5. Seurat, no Monet, Dan Graham; 6. Pagan Void, Ugo Rondinone; 7. Ik ben je vergeten, Hendrik-Jan Hunneman, 8. Blackberry/Braamboot, Maria Roosen; 9, 10. zt José Pedro Croft; 11, Otter, Rona Pondick.

zondag 21 juni 2009

Paleiskwartier 's Hertogenbosch: Stressed Spaces

In this last week’s running up to the summer, you find mostly all kind of events and contemporary art exhibitions in Brabant which are made site specific. This give them a little something extra, beyond the general exhibition shows in galleries and museums which also open their summer exhibitions around this time of the year. Sometimes they just give you that little nice surprise, where you hoped for entering an exhibition of contemporary art. Stressed Spaces opened earlier this month and just runs only until 19th of July. Stressed Spaces succeeds in giving you just this little extra, surprisingly well and this not only because the exhibition is organized in this somewhat strange location but surely also because of the vigor of the art which is on show here.
I know that more often, car parks can be and are used for quite a lot of other activities, then putting your car out of site for a while. This spot is close to the local City Museum for Contemporary Art the SM’s, where you will find the entrance to this strange ‘yellow’ intruder on the -2 sub ground level of this car park in the Paleiskwartier.
These yellow walls hides the temporarily building, which cuts through the centre of this low sub ground level and stresses out along for 175 meters. In this ‘yellow block’ the hibernation rooms are made to display a selection of the works of 25 artists. Each artist is placed in his or her own ‘cabin’ tailor-made for the occasion and fitted to the purpose of the specific visual art on display. This special ‘exhibition hall’ is designed by Krijn de Koning to give room to this year’s initiative of KW14, organized by Marjan Teeuwen.
Marjan Teeuwen, artist herself, explores each two years the possibilities of staging a site specific exhibition in ‘s Hertogenbosch. Empowered by themes she engaged with in her own work she sets out to find a location that fits, the means and selects the artist to participate. This time she invited 25, more or less known contemporary artists, working in different visual disciplines as there are: painters, sculptors, mixed media artists, and video & animation artists.
Her this year’s motive to invite just these artists she explains, is that they make art for its own purpose. A motivation which needs to be addressed, because nowadays art more and more is seen as to be an instrument to serve other goals. Goals which conflict with arts its own solemn identity. Art in the use with a purpose to make it a tool or a means, to target something else. In a way of what she calls “the miss use of art”. The autonomous identity of art is endangered by this development so that’s why “Stressed Spaces” is a call to arms.
More and more, she sees this happening everywhere around her. Art in use to reach out to meet the other goals of policymakers. Other goals for sure, as what art itself had in mind and where artists itself thought art is mend to be for. For its own sake!
Again, to justify any money or any attention is given to art, nowadays all kind of instrumental powers are contributed to art. Art as an instrument to educate the public’s morality, to endorse social development, to bind social integration, to revitalize old housing districts. This all to underlines art has ‘other’ necessary qualities, which will advocate and motivate why we should use and/or can use art and put public money in it. By now, when policymakers can’t think of anything else to realize their goals, they call artists and art in for the quick fix. Any goal can easily be reached by the introduction of these miraculous powers of art. So we don’t see art anymore as the only left toy for the rich, but as a mechanism to produce wealth and social development, or simply as a tool to bridge nasty contradiction in architecture or anything that unexpectedly went wrong in the first place.
Marjan Teeuwen stages, as we artists and art lovers don’t pay attention to this threat, art might dissolve in this instrumental use of art, as we know of in applied arts like; design, architecture, media and fashion or any other applied social sciences which think the use of these qualities of art, might come in quite handy.
That’s why Stressed Space can be seen as a comment on this especially. Just enjoy… its art!

In Stressed Spaces you can see, the photographs of stuffed spaces, by Marjan Teeuwen, the paintings of for example; Charlotte Schleiffert and Aaron van Erp. Statues of Paul de Reus, collage prints of Eva Fiori Kovacovsky and works of lots of other artists. One of the artists, who intrigued me the most with her work, is the video artist Saskia Olde Wolbers. Deadline (2007) is a slowly and silently, mirroring movie, with mind blowing images. Images where as the camera is hovering around slowly rotating objects in her studio, the voiceover of a woman, tells an as astonishing as puzzling story. A story of two brothers of which one is her father. The two brothers having ‘naturally’ the same father -her grandfather- but two different mothers. Still they are twins, born on the same moment. The story plays in a place fare away, in Gambia. Sometimes the words connect just like that, to the images in the video, what brings you in the flow of the story. The images in this movie let themselves compare to the narrative of the story, as ruins do, to the history of the past. The story is told as if it just happened, not being a strange fairytale. In this gentile voice and movement; the past, future and present are nicely stirred up. Imagination and fantasy are activated as logic and deduction in the same time. Fiction and non-fiction starts to unfold and connect lines that hooked up into your brain, questioning the truth about the story told, but also about your own experiences. And that is precisely where art itself is mend for, leaving you with a few more questions behind, as the few where you came in with.

Works on show are from: Maartje Korstanje, Charlotte Schleiffert, Voebe de Gruyter, Jasmijn Visser, Rob Voerman, Andrei Roiter, Karen Sagsyan, John Bock, Jasper de Beijer, Florette Dijkstra, Saskia Olde Wolbers, Robbie Cornelissen, Martha Colburn, Paul de Reus, Natasja Kensmil, Ina van Zyl, Rik Meijers, Manon Bovenkerk, Krijn de Koning, Rinke Nijburg, Eva-Fiore Kovacovsky, Aaron van Erp, Barend van Hoek, Jesper Just and Marjan Teeuwen.
Each with a room of their own in “Stressed Spaces”.
letterpress: (1) Marjan Teeuwen, (2,3,4)Krijn de Koning, (5) Charlotte Schleiffert, (6)Eva Fiore Kovacovsky, (7) Paul de Reus , (8) Aaron van Erp, (9,10) 2x still Saskia Olde Wolbers

Stressed Spaces, Car Park Paleiskwartier 's-Hertogenbosch, still on show untill 19 July 2009.

dinsdag 24 maart 2009

TEXTIELMUSEUM TILBURG: KNITTED WORLDS

In the ‘Audax Textiel Museum Tilburg’ is until June 14th, 2009, staged a modest but revealing exhibition on the state of the art of knitting: Knitted Worlds, A Call to Arms. This exhibition by Suzan Rüssler, curator of the same museum marks the threshold of a revaluation of this handicraft, which is in the last decades associated with a rather dull and old fashioned craft, only carried out as pastime by a few not the most fashioned old ladies. As if it had lost all its fashionable vigor what it had had earlier in the seventies of the bygone century.
Knitting had lost its appealing attraction and didn’t feed the imagination of artists or designers any more. Only in social fieldwork and certain feministic groups sometimes, knitting still played a role as a symbol of alliance and solidarity.
In this exhibition, not everything touches the right string, but it marks a shift. As a means of expression, linking in with its rich history and connotations, knitting has it all. It was only recent, when I was at the symposium The Curators in Witte De With (Rotterdam), where I helped out Ann Demeester, director of De Appel (Amsterdam), to cut the thread of her knitting-work, so she could change color and relaxed continue her needle-work while listening to the interview with Seth Siegelaub.So is it or isn’t it a women’s thing? Of course it has a rich history in the arts and crafts movement of the sixties and seventies, where it was eagerly used just because of its connected with social politics and feminism. But it still puts up artistic questions when mixed with actual topics like conservation and sustainability again, which are in the centre of our todays attention. Artists always have had a keen eye for these kind of lines, which like a ‘file rouge’ runs through time. It is a fact that there are even knitting interventions in urban public spaces, like fore instance in last year’s ZXZW festival in Tilburg. Knitting as an act of intervention! I am happily awaiting the New Gorilla Girls, who will pick-up this act of resistance to the bright and shiny male driven art world of the shiny naked steels of Jeff Koons and bling bling armored pieces by Damien Hirsts. These beautiful balaclava’s (Avata's) would come in quite handy and change any act of violence in a smooth and artistic intervention of feminine power. This modest exhibition in Tilburg, reveals this new potent possibility of the gentle power and concentrated attention of this barely by artist and designers forgotten craft: Knitting-it into a New World. We can use some change..., can't we? But don't let it come a Brave New World, like it already is far to much. And what is in the drawers of the table up above, is for you, yourself to discover. It explains the downfall of the 'plastic surgery' after too much of ER and VR of our photo shopped realities and tellies. A man again, this doctor 'Mad-lock'.

letterpress: works shown on the exhibition by Jimini Hignett; Gift for Dr. Matlock and Chrystl Rijkeboer; Avatar Martine/Roël/Anouska.

woensdag 18 maart 2009

ARTIS, DEN BOSCH: RACHEL KOOLEN


TECHNOCRATIC OPENNESS, FREE AGGRESSION

The artist Rachel Koolen (1979, Rotterdam) continues her ongoing artistic research of the history of the Dutch Social Security System appearance and imagery, in building a large scale installation throughout the exhibition space of Artis Den Bosch. She succeeded in transforming this space in collaboration with the German architect and colleague Andreas Müller.

In the exhibition space of Artis Den Bosch 'Technocratic Openness, Free Aggression', Rachel Koolen creates an special intervention which uses photography, video and display strategies to enroll and endorse a personal comment on the bureaucratic phenomenon’s of the Dutch social service institution. The Institution which is mend to give support to people on the raffle’s of Dutch Society. Being an artist, depending on income support, Koolen has also endured to participate and play part in this nowadays bureaucracy service system.

The artist focuses on the “Centrum voor Werk en Inkomen” as the central location and the focused subject in her work. In “Centrum voor Werk en Inkomen” are to day the so called ‘labour squares’; the located offices where the registration desks of unemployed workers is integrated with the execution of the supervision services, as well as that of the support projects and the regular contact meetings with clients are held. Services to secure rules and arrangements which lead the unemployed workers to new jobs.


These places, with their present structures which they derived from nowadays trade and service industries, adopted a fancy business-like character. High lighting, transparent and mirrored glass walls, open service desk aria’s and picture rich marketing and publicity campaigns’ supports the clients vision of immediate admission to these support services.

Koolen as an artist, examined and investigated the development and history of how the Dutch Social Security service system presented itself through the sixties, seventies and eighties and exposes the sources on which they based their present policies.

In an enclosed network of connections she exposes these layers, deconstructs and shows how these changes in presentation evokes a changes in the appearance of the bureaucracy itself, still forcing up even higher levels of control on their clients in a smooth and bright surrounding. In this transformation in which bureaucracy gave itself a pimped outlook, not everything looks likes what it is. In an even subtle artistic play Rachel Koolen brings to surface that what gently threatens to submerge.

Artis Den Bosch is open to visitors Thursday till Sunday, 1 pm till 5 pm.
The exhibition Technocratic Openness, Free Aggression closes on 26th of April 2009.
http://www.artisdenbosch.nl/ (Shown pictures are taken at the exhibition)