Archive for the ‘exhibitions’ Category

 

Beyond the Moon ~ Ger C. Bout / second part

October 5, 2018 posted in collaboration, exhibitions, projects, subsidy


Beyond the Moon, Ger C. Bout, detail, Unseen Amsterdam, 2018

Beyond the Moon ~
Ger C. Bout

13.10 – 11.11.2018

Locations: Upominki, Sint-Mariastraat 132B and 136B

OPENING: 13 October 2018 19h

Beyond the Moon exhibition at Upominki, taking place between October 13th and November 11th, presents a collection of works by deceased artist Ger C. Bout. It is the second part of a project inaugurated past September during CO-OP at Unseen Amsterdam. Conveying the same title as the central piece, this exhibition is an experiment on the exhibition making itself, as well as on the exhibition formats that may channel the artist’s interests and work. It is a result of a collective effort, which brings along the collaborative spirits between Upominki, Ger’s wife Riitta and Ger’s legacy. While showing a selection of the artist’s archive that studies the multiple meanings of a house – within his material and collaborative projects and the Beyond The Moon series for example – we are physically and figuratively constructing a platform that carries and frames Bout’s practice. And thus his endless interest around ideas of hosting, housing and making together.

Beyond the Moon at Upominki is being realised within the framework of the on-going Window dressing project. Yet, especially for this occasion, Upominki inhabits the ground floor in the house of our neighbours that will serve as a platform, through which different moments for engagement with the artists’ archive will be made possible. Through simple adjustments these two spaces will be serving as sites for exhibition, workshop or a discursive event, depending on the situation.

Upon this endeavour we wish to explore the ways in which the individual artistic vision challenges that of the curator, and how they can merge or diffuse. We are interested in expanding the notions of collaboration and the manner in which the artist’s legacy can be transmitted outside of the sterile or the neutral. As we find ourselves most essentially motivated by the relationships we built throughout our creative processes. This project is a tribute to Ger C. Bout’s work and our friendship.

Upcoming events during the exhibition:

  • Wednesday 7th November at 12:45 – 14:45

Maak je eigen droomhuis in collaboration with the Nieuwe Gaffel, hosted by Rottterdam based artist and architect Gill Baldwin. Workshop for children between 6-12 years from the Oude Westen primary schools, inspired by the artist’s fascination in dysfunctionality of architecture, curved lines and asymmetry.

  • Exact date TBA soon

En wat nu?! A get-together of different individuals and neighbourhood initiatives, actively involved in the on-going discussion on gentrification and social housing situation in the Oude Westen area.

For more information see also here. For the most up to date information on our events follow our fb page.

This project is kindly supported by CBK Rotterdam, Gemeente Rotterdam.

With special thanks to Riitta Bout-Saari and Samer Abdelnour.

 

 

 

 

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Beyond the Moon ~ Ger C. Bout

September 9, 2018 posted in collaboration, exhibitions, open call, research, subsidy

089_the_House_Project (dragged)
The House Project in Pori, Finland 1993

Beyond the Moon ~
Ger C. Bout

21.09 – 23.09.2018

during CO-OP at Unseen Amsterdam
Westergasfabriek

OFFICIAL OPENING: 20 September 2018 18:30-21:00h

In the Summer of 2016 the artist Ger C. Bout (1950 NL) approached Upominki, seeking for mentorship and assistance on the prospects of presenting publically his photographic work. Despite the generational gap, their open attitudes led them to a friendship. They spent some time discussing exhibition making, the possibilities and specificities of his practice and his interest in images. Unfortunately, before making the first public presentation of his photographic work, Ger deceased in May 2017 after a yearlong fight against cancer.

Together with the insight and support of his wife Riitta Bout-Saari, in the last half-year we have been investing in re-visiting the archive of Ger’s rich body of work, as well as his most recent photographic series. One of them Beyond the Moon will be presented at CO-OP during Unseen Amsterdam.
Beyond The Moon produced between 2013-2015 shows the artist long fascination in body-movement, as observed in theatre and dance. It is a series of large-scale black-and-white digital photographs capturing zoomed-in body parts. The series derives from the artist in-depth – medium and material – research into the subject of a body in its most abstract form. Through this work Ger reminds us that seeing and thinking, only seem to be the same, but in fact are very different. Beyond the moon brings a memory of the time when as a child we looked at the world without any preconceived notions, thus with no input in the memory of things. This work is the artist’s proposition to look at only one thing at the same time, in its most pure environment, and where the body is intentionally detached from any possibility of being erotically interesting. Finally, this sincerely aesthetic work may be seen as the artist’s turn towards the Wittgenstein’s idea of pictures, which by themselves do not carry any meaning, but only acquire one by being put to a specific uses and by being applied in a specific contexts.

Beyond the Moon exhibition at CO-OP – conveying the same title as the central piece – is an experiment on the exhibition making and the exhibition formats that may channel the artist’s interests and work. It is a result of a collective effort, which brings along the collaborative spirits between Upominki, Riitta and Ger’s legacy. While showing a selection of the artist’s archive that studies the multiple meanings of a house, within his material and collaborative projects, and the Beyond The Moon series for example. We are physically and figuratively constructing a platform that carries and frames Bout’s practice within his endless interest around ideas of hosting, housing and making together.

Subsequently to this international exhibition, between October 13th and November 11th we will be bringing Beyond the Moon to Rotterdam and presenting it in our space and in the neighbours homes. This shift will be the perfect moment to give different formats to the exhibition of Ger’s work, while also enabling his legacy to be shown in the city he loved, where he lived and worked. This simultaneous endeavour will create a wonderful opportunity for the local public to see the artist’s work in a neighbourhood/community context.

Through this presentation Upominki wishes to explore the ways in which the individual artistic vision challenges that of the curator, and how they can merge or diffuse. We are interested in expanding the notions of collaboration and the manner in which the artist’s legacy can be transmitted outside of the sterile or the neutral. As we find ourselves most essentially motivated by the relationships we built throughout our creative processes. This project is a tribute to Ger C. Bout’s work and our friendship.

Ger C. Bout (1950-2017) was a Dutch architect and artist based in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Following years of completing furniture designs, architectural structures and installations, Bout began initiating large scale projects in public spaces internationally. In recent years he has focused on and incorporated photography into his projects. His ideas were always process based; he applied multiple techniques and skills to realise his work using varieties of mediums and expressions from architecture to furniture design, installation, drawing, performance, sculpture and photography.

This project is kindly supported by CBK Rotterdam, Gemeente Rotterdam.

With special thanks to Riitta Bout-Saari.

BANNER EXHIBITING

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Tools to keep your house unfinished ~ by Isabel Marcos

July 9, 2018 posted in exhibitions, functional objects and materials, projects, subsidy

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Tools to keep your house unfinished ~
Window dressing #4

15.07 – 30.08.2018

INAUGURATION: Saturday 14 July at 19:00h

Tools to keep your house unfinished by the Spanish artist Isabel Marcos, is a fourth site-specific intervention in the framework of Window dressing initiated by Upominki in the Winter of 2017.

Through the disruption of continuity and where ambiguity can be experienced – alternative spaces are being created. An ambiguity that rather than bringing us to a blur, can sharpen our senses and stimulate imagination.

Isabel Marcos believes that in such transitory spaces and in in-between realities, we find places for resistance. Where the in-betweenness exists, in a present that is looking to a future, the space questions its own identity and invites us to rethink this notion, as well as to delve into the relation between human subjectivity and inhabited structures.

Upominki is a space in transition, with upcoming walls and unexisting dropped ceilings. While being renovated collectively, we try to rethink its identity, values, means and future.

Through challenging the quotidian interactions between bodies and architecture, Tools to keep your house unfinished introduces plasticity and elasticity to both: the hard and rough surfaces, and to the tools that are being used in the renovation process. In order to invite the involved people to consider dysfunctionality as an ambiguous productivity, through these gestures – both physically and metaphorically – Marcos tries to obstruct the renovation of Upominki as such.

In the course of the evening we will screen the artist Horizon and skirting board (2015) and tell more about the start of our collaboration.

Come and join us in the on-going proces and feel free to bring anyone who might be interested!

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Window dressing is an ongoing project since 2017 that gradually unfolds in the frontal window of Upominki. The project takes a form of smooth gestures that come and go, while being carried out by various invited artists. As the months go by, Upominki’s window becomes an on-site dialogue where the individual and the collective identity meet. Window dressing is made possible with the joint effort of beloved family and friends.

 

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The Mothernists

May 25, 2015 posted in collaboration, exhibitions, projects, subsidy

Irene Pérez_Beautiful Family_Detail
Irene Pérez, Beautiful Family, 2011 

Within the framework of The Mothernists Conference June 5/6/7 Upominki is pleased to host the international group exhibition.

The Mothernists
6 June – 5 July, 2015
OPENING: Saturday 6 June at 20:00

The Mothernists exhibition features works by:
Guy Ben-Ner (IL) / Irene Pérez (ES) / Ane Hjort Guttu (NO) / Lise Haller Baggesen Ross (DK) / Courtney Kessel (USA) / Elżbieta Jabłońska (PL) / Adam Rzepecki (PL)

The Mothernists Conference June 5/6/7 is a three-day-long transatlantic conference, bringing together the work and thought of practicing international artists, art historians, educators, curators and writers on the topic of caring labour and cultural re-production. The Mothernists attempts to open up philosophical, political, aesthetic and social questions made visible through the co-existing practices of mothering and cultural re- production, bringing these into the diverse discourses that the participants professionally as artists, writers, philosophers, curators, historians and educators are part of.

Speakers
Lise Haller Baggesen Ross (DK) / Dr. Rachel Epp Buller (USA) / Christa Donner (USA) / Andrea Francke (UK) / Renske Janssen (NL) / Courtney Kessel (USA) / Dr. Natalie S. Loveless (USA) / Irene Pérez (ES) / Shira Richter (IL) / Miriam Schaer (USA) / Esmé Valk (NL) / Mirjam Westen (NL)

Exhibiting artists
Guy Ben-Ner (IL) / Irene Pérez (ES) / Ane Hjort Guttu (NO) / Lise Haller Baggesen Ross (DK) / Courtney Kessel (USA) / Elżbieta Jabłońska (PL) / Vasiliki Sifostratoudaki (GR) / Barbara Philipp (AT) / Adam Rzepecki (PL)

Locations
PrintRoom, Leeszaal Rotterdam West, Upominki

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Detailed program of The Mothernists Conference can be found on mothervoices.org/the-mothernists or downloaded here The Mothernists Program

The Mothernists Conference is a project by the m/other voices foundation realised in close collaboration with PrintRoom, Leeszaal Rotterdam West and Upominki
The Mothernists Conference is kindly supported by Gemeente Rotterdam

 

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Apprentice/Master exhibition #12

February 9, 2015 posted in exhibitions, projects

9 March – 26 March 2015
Lieke Snellen (NL) with Davey Schoute (NL) | Hannah Whitlow (UK) | Liing Heaney (IR)

OPENING: Thursday 12 March at 19:00
20:00 Lecture by: Guy Königstein from the IRDEH Institute for Research and Documentation of the Erased History

Closing: Thursday 26 March at 19:00

Upon meeting each other for the first time, we seemed to agree that borders always define a space as such, so we set out to find them. Within the exhibition period we’ve based our research on a communal archeological journey to the far corners of Rotterdam; however, what we may find along the way just might diverse our path in other directions, for as far as the corners are concerned… We will be continually developing a body of work over the course of the three weeks, treating our findings as a nerve centre for the exhibition.

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The Apprentice/Master project originally initiated by Kunstpodium T in 2008, matches talented graduating fine art students (BA or MA) from different art schools in Europe to renowned contemporary artists who connect with the work of the apprentices. During the project, groups of three to four apprentices work together and exhibit along with their master artist. The coming season will result in a series of 20 exhibitions in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Belgium, Czech Republic and the Netherlands, from which 9 take place at Kunstpodium T.

The Apprentice/Master project is made possible by:
Museum De Pont, Mondriaan Fonds, BKKC, Gemeente Tilburg,
Provincie Noord-Brabant, De Brakke Grond, Croxhapox,
No 5 Rutland Street, Block T, AMU Gallery, InBetween,
Backlit Gallery, Upominki, Willem ll Fabriek, B32
and the participating academies.

 

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The Research Centre for Practicing Nature / documentation

December 29, 2014 posted in documentation, exhibitions, projects

overview2_the_research_centre_for_practicing_nature_sanne_van_gent

Exhibition overview
Sanne van Gent

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Exhibition overview
Sanne van Gent

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Exhibition overview
Sanne van Gent

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Documentation performance “Missing pieces” by Johanna Weissenrieder

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Exhibition overview
Sanne van Gent

performance_Johanna_weissenrieder_the_research_center_for_practicing_nature (1)

Documentation performance “Missing pieces” by Johanna Weissenrieder

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The Research Centre for Practicing Nature

November 9, 2014 posted in exhibitions, projects


Johanna Weissenrieder, Missing pieces

The Research Centre for Practicing Nature
Sanne van Gent, Johanna Weissenrieder
OPENING: 15 November 2014 at 19.00h

Every lingering remnant in adults’ memory of the atmosphere of enchanted forests, every last vestige in them of belief in miracles, every breath of theirs which still inhales a perfume of fairytales reveals itself beneath the wretched, crazed disguise of these feebly invented landscapes, and exposes man and his senseless treasure-chest filled with intellectual trinkets, his superstitions, his ravings. Here he squats, surrounded by all the round pebbles he could find, counting them and laughing: He is happy.
Louis Aragon. Paris Peasant, 1994: 120

Most dictionaries define artificial as something that does not appear in nature. Yet if nature created humans, wouldn’t anything man created be the by-product of nature itself? Why do we regard objects or products created by man as “unnatural”?

If we follow this thought further, one can view almost everything as being artificial, even trees, since before their presence on earth, they were not “natural”. Therefore, nothing must be natural since before it existence, it must already “exist” in nature for it to be considered natural. Still how do we, collectively and individually, determine and regard what is natural and what is artificial?

Inspired by this question, Sanne van Gent (NL) and Johanna Weissenrieder (SE) study the often vague distinction between existing (natural) landscapes and the cultivated ones, thus created by a man. The Research Center for Practicing Nature, is their collaborative endeavour which consists of a working period, an exhibition with a performance event, a window shop with customized products, and a discussion during the Conversa evening on the 3rd of December.

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Anti-ad: ANTI-DOG a project by Kipras Dubauskas / documentation

May 23, 2014 posted in collaboration, documentation, events, exhibitions

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Kipras Dubauskas, Anti-ad: ANTI-DOG, commissioned by Upominki for Kunstvlaai Festival 2014

Photography credit: courtesy of the artist

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Anti-ad: ANTI-DOG a project by Kipras Dubauskas

May 13, 2014 posted in events, exhibitions, projects, subsidy

Upominki presents:

Anti-ad: ANTI-DOG
A project by Kipras Dubauskas

KUNSTVLAAI 2014
FROM SAFETY TO WHERE?
I LOVE THE FEELING OF BEING SLIGHTLY LOST
Amstelpark, Amsterdam
21-25 May, 2014

OPENING: Wednesday 21 May 2014 at 18.00-22.00h

Upominki’s contribution for Kunstvlaai festival is made in a close collaboration with Lithuanian artist Kipras Dubauskas who’s practice is driven by the interest in the language of the street and public domain.

Taking given format – billboard – as the starting point, Dubauskas imitated ordinary advertisement that promotes pepper spray and exposed it on the partly broken stand. Within act of fracture – both physically and phonetically, he wishes to bring the attention on the current state of independent artists, and most art initiatives, where public visibility becomes the main issue that guarantees steady financial support.

Together with Dubauskas we wonder, could we comment on this problematical situation by using its very own means? Thus by using mesmerizing media strategies and radically turning them upside down – creating a chaotic situation that becomes a self-reflexive act, as well as a prominent method for criticizing particular public realm?

Anti-ad: ANTI-DOG project is a result of an on-ongoing discussion between Kipras Dubauskas and Weronika Zielinska. As one of the two case studies, in 2012 Zielinska wrote extensively about another project of Dubauskas in her MA thesis on hospitality.

Kipras Dubauskas graduated from the Vilnius Academy of Arts, Lithuania (2010) with a BA degree in sculpture department, and earned his MA from KASK in Gent, Belgium (2013). He is one of the founders and collaborators of artist-run initiative “Artkor Project Space” based in Vilnius (2006-2010).

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During the festival Upominki will be taking part in one of the discusssions within the SPACES IN DIALOGUE, a themed programme of round-table discussions.

See SPACES IN DIALOGUE for more information about the programme.

24 May 2014 at 15.00 Het Glazen Huis in the Amstelpark

POSITIONING THE INITIATIVE: FINANCIAL SURVIVAL STRATEGIES: How to deal with structural and occasional financial support, membership, other ways of generating income and being (in)dependent.

With Upominki, Verein zur Förderung von Kunst und Kultur am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz e.V and Apice for Artists

To find out more about the festival’s history and its context see the link.
Planning to visit the festival?!
Check here for directions, opening hours and full programme.

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If I had it, I would give it to you / documentation

May 10, 2014 posted in documentation, exhibitions

Exhibition view
From up to down: Alice Mendelowitz, Hunter Longe

Exhibition view
From left to right: Sol Archer, Vasiliki Sifostratoudaki

Exhibition view / Detail
Sol Archer

Exhibition view / Detail
Vasiliki Sifostratoudaki

Detail
Vasiliki Sifostratoudaki

Exhibition view
From left to right: Sriwhana Spong, Susanna Browne

Exhibition view / Detail
Susanna Browne

 

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