Exhibition:
'ShadowDance'

From 18 September 2010 to 9 January 2011



Logo 'ShadowDance', kunsthal KAdE

From 18 September 2010 to 9 January 2011 on show at Kunsthal KAdE, the exhibition 'ShadowDance'. 'ShadowDance' is a group exhibition featuring work by more than thirty visual artists, all operating on the international art scene and all fascinated by the effect of shadow. The exhibits will
vary in terms of content and form. The
common denominator will be the use of
shadow – and more particularly moving
shadows – as a crucial means of visual
expression. The artists use shadow as
a metaphor for a range of (sometimes
heavy-weight) themes: time - alter ego
- evil - death. But the shadow phenomenon also inspires more light-hearted work involving the creation of illusions and shadow ‘play’.

At ShadowDance the electric light goes
out for a while as, with an imaginary
candle flickering in your hand, you are
drawn into the sometimes dark but also
whimsical worlds evoked by the art.
‘ShadowDance’ is the first major exhibition about the use of shadows in art ever to be staged in the Netherlands.

Catalogue
The catalogue that has been produced specially for the exhibition includes an essay ‘The Shadow’s Hole’ by Edzard Mik. ‘Shadows appeal to us. They stimulate our imagination, feed our fears and desires. They follow us, stay with us, move ahead. They imitate, mock and deform. They scare, obscure, make us virtually disappear, sometimes deliberately, sometimes not, and in more frivolous moments hint at another, supremely fleeting existence, in which nothing seems important except the shape they happen to have taken.’
The catalogue also contains a flipbook animation by Tomas Schats and an anthology of quotations and extracts about shadows, from Plato to Peter Schlemihl and Lucky Luke.


David Claerbout, The Shadow Piece, 2005,
Videoprojection b/w, sound (digital betacam) dvd, courtesy: Museum de Pont, Tilburg


Viviane Sassen, Untitled, 2010, colour print, 80 x 100 cm, courtesy: Motive Gallery, Amsterdam

Conrad Shawcross, Slow Arc Inside a Cube IV, 2009, Mechanism System, Steel, Light, Aluminium, Motors 90 x 90 x 180 cms, 35.46 x 35.46 x 70.92 inches, Courtesy of Victoria Miro, London 

Thirty-six international operating artists
Vito Acconci (USA), Charles Atlas (USA), Dirck van Baburen († NL), Aram Bartholl (DE), Christian Boltanski (FR), Jim Campbell (USA), David Claerbout (BE), Haim Elmoznino (IL), Mounir Fatmi (MA), Ellis Gallagher (USA), Hanna von Goeler (DE), Samuel van Hoogstraten († NL), Mella Jaarsma (NL), William Kentridge (ZA), Ralph Kistler (DE), Germaine Kruip (NL), Couzijn van Leeuwen (NL), Gabriel Lester (NL), Zilla Leutenegger (CH), Mark Lewis (UK), Rafael Lozano-Hemmer (MX), Wolfgang Munch & Kiyoshi Furukawa (DE & JP), Serge Onnen (FR/ NL), Lotte Reiniger († DE), Viviane Sassen (NL), Tomas Schats (NL), Hyo-Jung Seo (KR), Teresa Serrano (MX), Conrad Shawcross (UK), Sam Taylor-Wood (UK), The One Minutes (NL), Dimitri Vangrunderbeek (BE), Kara Walker (USA), Andy Warhol († USA), Diet Wiegman (NL).


Diet Wiegman, Shadow Dancing, 2008

ShadowDance film programme
On Thursday 28 October Kunsthal KAdE will be staging an evening showcasing shadows in films and architectural films, in collaboration with De Lieve Vrouw Film Theatre Café. Jan Salden will use various film fragments to illustrate the role shadows play in film.
The evening will open with the film Play by artist Martine Stig, made in New York in 2010. The film begins at 19.30 and will end at 21.30. Location: Theater Film Café De Lieve Vrouw, Lieve Vrouwestraat 13, Amersfoort.
On Tuesday 14 December the 1932 silent film drama Schatten – Eine nächtliche Halluzination (Warning Shadows) by Arthur Robison will be screened. For kids, there will be a showing of Disney’s Peter Pan, the boy who loses his shadow, on the afternoon of Wednesday 24 November.
A continuous film programme will be screened in the Auditorium at KAdE, including the animated film Father and Daughter, made by Michael Dudok de Wit in 2000, advertising films by Sandeman and a fragment of the 1932 German horror film Vampyr by Carl Theodor Dreyer.

Gabriel Lester, The Past Catching up with the Present, 2010, installation flat-belt conveyor, mixed material, 136 x 243 x 94 cm, flat-belt conveyor 205 x 91 x 60 cm,
courtesy: Galerie Fons Welters, Amsterdam

ShadowTraces by Ellis Gallagher throughout Amersfoort
In the week prior to the opening Brooklyn artist Ellis Gallagher will produce ‘shadowtraces’ around the town of Amersfoort. These chalk drawings of the shadows of objects like bikes, lamp posts, trees and fences are designed to stimulate the viewer, making them stop and observe, enter into conversations and so experience their environment in a new, positive way.
Ellis Gallagher will also run a workshop for students from Utrecht School of the Arts (HKU).


Sam Taylor-Wood, Bram Stoker’s Chair, (VII) 2005, C-print, 121.9 x 96.5 cm, courtesy: White Cube, Londen, UK

ShadowDance has been made possible with the financial support from:


The Netherlands Foundation for Visual Arts, Design and Architecture (Fonds BKVB)

Performance Saudade chamber choir
On Sunday 3 October chamber choir Saudade from Utrecht will perform in the Auditorium. Saudade’s mainly a cappella repertoire ranges from Renaissance and Baroque to contemporary. Conductor Vincent Doek will draw inspiration from ShadowDance for this free concert, selecting music on the basis of the works in the exhibition.

Dance performance with Julia Mitomi (finalist of So You Think You Can Dance)
Director Gerard Mosterd has produced a solo dance performance based on the use of shadow specially for ShadowDance. His interdisciplinary and highly physical shows reveal a constant obsession with defining identity. The contrast between Western and non-Western identity is a constant challenge for Mosterd, particularly that between Western and Asian identity. The shadow principle as a reflection of the Asian world view is key to his work. The show will be performed by the spectacular Japanese-German hip hop dancer and So You Think You Can Dance finalist Julia Mitomi.
Date: 14 November, 15.30 hrs in the Auditorium at Kunsthal KAdE. Free entry.
This performance is in cooperation with Theater Film Café De Lieve Vrouw, Amersfoort.