Feedback #1, Marshall McLuhan and the arts; West, The Hague

Mogens Jacobsen

The present exhibition at West, spread over both locations at Lange Voorhout and Groenewegje, looks like a first presentation of a new gallery or a new artists’ platform.

Mogens Jacobsen

Mogens Jacobsen

It doesn’t lack ambition at all and works by 15 artists and artists groups are on show.

Harun Farocki

Harun Farocki

It must have been quite an effort to give every work the space and attention it needs, even more so as most works need technology to make them work.

Angela Washko

Angela Washko

It also means there are 15 different ways of seeing, 15 different worlds for the viewer to swallow.

Disnovation

Reynold Reynolds

Reynold Reynolds

That is hardly possible on a rainy November afternoon as every feature needs attention, let alone the excess of information about Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980), the inspirer of the show.

Reynold Reynolds

Thomas Bégin

Thomas Bégin

It is clear an institute like West needs another way of seeing from the viewer than an average modern art museum.

Mediengruppe Bitnik

Mediengruppe Bitnik

Wolfgang Spahn

That is all right, very good even, but a show like this awakens high expectations for the next exhibitions.

Wolfgang Spahn

Wolfgang Spahn

Wolfgang Spahn

All fifteen works bare a promise to give more, to show more, to linger more on the subject and on the world of the specific artist or artists group.

MRZB

MRZB

MRZB

All works have to do, in one way or another, with Marshall McLuhan’s ideas about media (‘the medium is the message’, remember that one?), technology and the role of the artist.

MRZB

Darsha Hewitt, Stephanie Syjuco

Darsha Hewitt, Stephanie Syjuco

Although very coherent, problem is that the show doesn’t really evoke dialogue between the works.

Darsha Hewitt

Darsha Hewit

Stephanie Syjuco

It is as if dialogue is saved for the following exhibitions.

Hito Steyerl

Hito Steyerl

Christof Migone

If that is so, expectations can’t be anything but very high.

Willy Lemaitre

[Click on the pictures to enlarge]

©Villa Next Door 2017

Content of all photographs courtesy to the artists and to West, Den Haag

 

Bertus Pieters

Jesper Just, Continuous Monuments; West at Huis Huguetan, The Hague

About the sculpture by Jesper Just, presently in public space at Lange Voorhout, i wrote an article for Villa La Repubblica. Click here to read the article (in Dutch).

The public sculpture is part of Just’s project Continuous Monuments at West in Huis Huguetan (Huguetan House).

Just has used the same kind of chalky concrete blocks to make walls in the small 18^th century palace as an environment for four of his video loops, as well as a work specially made for the venue.

Well, in fact everything looks very much made for the venue in spite of the fact that the videos were conceived at different times.

All videos have to do with walls and architecture.

They become the visible power of ideas, social and political, and they are all confronted by lone individuals, women who seem to bend the power of these walls to their own creativity.

Videos, sounds and walls blend in a very special way in the architecture of Huis Huguetan.

[Click on the pictures to enlarge]

©Villa Next door 2017

Content of all photographs courtesy to Jesper Just and West, Den Haag

 

Bertus Pieters

Gagarin, Slominski and Beuys; West gallery, The Hague

West gallery has temporarily turned into a reading room, or rather three reading rooms.

You could easily spend the whole afternoon in the gallery discovering and being inspired without being hindered by strange noises.

If i were you, i’d do so.

(Grün) Die Geige, die Geige ((Green) The Fiddle, the Fiddle) by Andreas Slominski (1959) challenges or defies (it depends on your own reaction) the reader/viewer to use his/her imagination to find unknown/unexpected visions.

The main front room gives the floor to all editions of the biannual magazine Gagarin, the Artists in their own Words.

Initiated by Wilfried Huet  just after the turn of the century, it publishes texts by living artists only, without interference of curators, art historians, critics, interviewers or superfluous introductions.

I must say it is difficult to decide where to start.

The best thing to do is just to leaf through some of the magazines at random and stop at a point where you think you found something interesting, strange or intriguing.

There is no irritating music to keep your mind from wandering.

Not even the silence is telling you to make your choice, pay your money and go on to the next consumption booth.

The four sketchbooks Projekt Westmensch (The Westman Project) of the late 1950s are said to contain Beuys’ base for his main ideas about art and creativity and its functions in society.

To some Joseph Beuys (1921 – 1986) is the Messiah, to others he is a charlatan.

His personality has elements of both, but generally speaking, society could do with more Beuys, even today and on a local level in a town like The Hague (or any other town or city for that matter), that tries to keep up with what time seems to demand and in doing so forgets about the potential creativity of its citizens.

The present exhibition at West at least gives it a try.

[Click on the pictures to enlarge]

(Content of all pictures courtesy to the artists and West Den Haag)

Bertus Pieters

Judea; West Gallery (at Huguetan House), The Hague

I visited the exhibition Judea, organised by West gallery, to write a review for Villa La Repubblica. Click here to read the full review(in Dutch).

Ceiling of the garden room, Huegetan House. Though from the same age, this decorated ceiling comes from a destroyed house in Vlissingen.

As i have said already a lot on Villa La Repubblica i just leave you here with some impressions and a few remarks.

Stucco over the stair well and in the lantern, probably from Mme Huguetan’s times.

The show is staged in Huegetan House, Lange Voorhout, originally built in the 18^th century by English King/ Dutch Stadtholder William III’s own designer Daniel Marot for banker’s daughter Adriana Huguetan, whose family became rich from investments in the Dutch East Indies.

Lung Neaw in a rococo room.

That seems to be the right backdrop for an exhibition curated by Thai artist Arin Rungjang and featuring works by other Southeast Asian artists. Rirkrit Tiravanija’s (Thailand) monumental movie Lung Neaw visits his neighbours is exhibited, showing a former rice farmer in Thailand living a life full of gentleness and friendliness.

Pratchaya Phinthong’s (Thailand) movie Rehearsal No.3 is extremely short and shows caged birds in the context of the Buddhist release life custom.

Rungjang’s Bones, books, artificial lights and fireflies is a multidisciplinary work and, together with his Judea, the centre piece of the show.

The movie part digs into memory and history, to the memories of Rungjang’s grandmother, the military dictatorship in Thailand, the Second World War and to Siam (as Thailand was formerly known) in the 19^th and 17^th centuries.

The movie is accompanied by a video loop with colour lights and fire flies.

There are two loops by Lee Kit (from Hong Kong), one showing the legs of somebody vacuum cleaning (in Huguetan House with a stylish backdrop).

Another impressive movie, that counterbalances Rungjang’s own work, as Tiravanija’s film does, is Letters from Panduranga by Nguyen Trinh Thi (from Vietnam).

The film is about the demise of the once powerful Cham people and culture in Viëtnam and about culture and power in general.

In the Garden room are the material parts of Rungjang’s Bones, books, etc. There are some relics of his grandmother’s funeral,

two fireflies,

a Japanese translation of a book about Siam by a 17^th century Dutch East India Company’s administrator,

[Remarkable and accurate story of the coups, that happened recently in the year 1688 in Siam. Containing the suffered defamation in, and the expulsion of the French from that Realm. From the Handwriting of the Supreme Commander of the French over there, translated into Dutch by A.v.H. In Leiden, by Frederik Haaring, 1692.]

pages from a late 17^th century Dutch book with the administrator’s Dutch text as well as a story about Phaulkon, a Greek adviser or contriver at the Siamese court and a description of the coup in Siam and the expulsion of the French in 1688,

as well as some reproductions of a 17^th century painting by Johannes Vingboons representing Ayutthaya, the then capital of Siam. The name Ayutthaya was corrupted in Dutch to Judea, hence the name of the exhibition.

To stress the fragmentation of remembrance, thinking, watching and human activity, a short untitled movie about a jeepney by Maria Taniguchi (from the Phillipines) is on show,

as is the other loop by Lee Kit, a double channelled one showing a hand replacing pieces of beans on the right channel and a slightly wrinkled and stained piece of cloth on the left channel. Even our smallest daily activities leave traces.

Do take your time to see this wonderful show, as it is quite unique being a many-sided narrative by Southeast Asian artists in a Dutch 18^th (and 19th/20th ) century interior. There are comfortable seats everywhere and it’s worth spending the whole afternoon there (it’s your summer break anyway!). All works have a relaxed pace. Hint to West: serve coffee or tea to your visitors. It is always good to sip some postcolonial drinks under the circumstances.

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Bertus Pieters

Face to Face; West gallery, The Hague

In the exhibition Face to Face West shows four works about body communication, or rather facial communication.

In Bjørn Melhus’ video Out Of The Blue a lecture is given about growing up in the beginning of the age of mass communication and entertainment by television. Your teacher has a sack over his head. Does mass communication make the individual faceless? How acceptable is visual communication without a representative face?

In Stefan Panhans’ video Sorry look-alikes of famous people from the entertainment industry rub shoulders in a crowded train.

Facial expressions are fixed to individual characters and don’t really change.

Although there is hardly any space for body language there is a body language of sorts in spite of the fact that none of the passengers is looking at one another.

Meg Stuart’s video The Only Possible City shows a person trying to suppress her weeping.

The expressions are directly recognisable as an expression of sorrow and loss, the pain of life and the will to go on with life in spite of that pain.

Christoph Girardet’s and Matthias Müller’s double slide series Everything Not Said combines short sentences from psychiatric questionnaires with pictures of people with bandaged faces from movies, which is

probably one of the most inclusive of the works on show, the bandages being the expression of the faces combined with these very intimate questions about inner well being or inner pain. As such it is a well composed and, in a way, very moving show. Go and take your time to see it for yourself, it’s very much worth it!

[Click on the pictures to enlarge]

Bertus Pieters

Distributors, West Gallery, The Hague

I visited the exhibition Distributors at West Gallery to write a review for Villa La Repubblica. Read the full review here (in Dutch). The exhibition was made by artist Remco Torenbosch with works by six artists of very different generations but all were/are busy with the distribution of/in their works in an alternative way.

There is Charlotte Posenenske’s iconic Revolving Vane of 1967/68 in combination with

sounds by Hannah Weinberger of 2015 and

a diagram Spectrum of Meanings of the Term Police by K.P. Brehmer from 1978.

In the big front gallery Brehmer’s works are

combined with textiles from the Seth Siegelaub Collection. These are

textiles from far away (France to Peru) and long ago (12th to 19th century).

Next to the office Fred Lonidier’s video Confessions of the Peace Corps of 1974 can be seen and

in the back gallery Wendelien van Oldenborgh’s La Javanaise of 2013 can be seen. All these artists have thought of how to distribute the information or artistic content they want to share and made distribution part of their aesthetic ventures.

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Bertus Pieters

Patrick Bernatchez: Lost in Time. West gallery, The Hague

At West gallery there are four movies on show by Patrick Bernatchez at the moment. I saw parts of three of them. It is difficult to make a choice, but you have to, as seeing all of them would take you more than two hours, which in itself might be a good idea if you want to have a Bernatchez movie afternoon. Bernatchez has a preoccupation with time and connected to that: space, viewing angle, rhythm and narrative. It results in some fascinating works.

Like Piano Orbital.01 in which Guillaume Lekeu’s piano sonata is taken as a starting point. Things, including the music, are literally taken upside down and into orbit. The music seems to become timeless and the concert hall space becomes unlimited.

Monumental Lost in Time brings in the idea of a narrative that may refer to any other mythical, legendary, historic, future or real narrative in any time and in any space. Literally on top of that snow seems to cover up everything, including any remembrances of the past, present or future.

As for Trilogie Chrysalides, i only saw a short excerpt of it, so go and see it for yourself!

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Bertus Pieters

Split, Konrad Smolenki at West gallery, The Hague

At the moment in the exhibition Split at West gallery, Konrad Smolenski shows three installations, each accompanied by audio-works by others. It all works out quite impressively.

This is Fly, with cattle skulls and a horse skull and speakers in their eye sockets,

which still make some noise but visually the conversation has congealed.

Mattin’s sound-work Tinnitus adds quite a nasty sound to the installation, so

continuing to the next work is just as well.

The installation Judge is exhibited in a darkened room. Its material structure is more or less

lost in the dark, but its influence can’t be missed in the room, reinforced as it is by the voice

of a dead pilot represented by the trance medium Jack Sutton.

Smolenki’s three works all look dumb or voiceless and, logically thinking, they are. But

the skulls make some noise of their own, the Judge seems to get a voice from the tape by Sutton and

the work The End of Radio, consisting of microphones, also makes noise itself. The microphones

all reach out to one point, in this case to an audio-work by Gregory Whitehead.

In fact the combinations with the sound-works make new installations. That also makes the idea of a split quite redundant.

(Click on the pictures to enlarge)

Bertus Pieters