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Kunsthal KAdE is celebrating its tenth anniversary in the summer of 2019! We will celebrate this with an exhibition centered on the medium 'video', with eleven films full of visual imagination. These make you look mesmerized and capture a specific moment in "eternity," using the power of repetition or (slow) steady progress. A blues pianist behind a piano in the grass; a man turning against the earth's rotation at the North Pole; a hypnotic kaleidoscopic play of colors on the ceiling of the great hall; the immensity of a train ride. These are specific motifs captured in a sense of infinity. The selection of the 11 films was made in part thanks to the EKARD collection.
"Exhibitions featuring only video art are scarce; for that reason alone, this one at Kunsthal KAdE - always quirky and thus really adding something to the national museum's offerings - is interesting" (Het Parool)
assume vivid astro focus [Eli Sudbrack (BR, 1968)] immerses the viewer in a psychedelic, colorful world, in which you can be endlessly trapped, looking for hold in the patterns that glide by. avaf balances between abstractions of reality and fantasy. In 2014, avaf created the design for the KAdECafé antes vulgar agora fino (meaning: before vulgar, now chic) In this work, avaf experiments with texture and color combinations in an abstract way. On the walls and ceiling of the café, all kinds of colored paint strokes and stains can be seen, as if testing out color pens.
Matt Calderwood (GB, 1975) is fascinated by light. And especially artificial light. When it is there, we can "see. When it disappears, we lose the ability to perceive the world. In a series of films, Calderwood plays with this principle by slowly eliminating light. Or, on the contrary, making it rise. A light bulb disappears in black paint. A set of brightly shining fluorescent tubes is shot piece by piece. A field of sulfur heads of matches flames up hell. And extinguishes.
"Video art that makes time disappear. A wondrous almost hallucinatory experience" (AD)
The work of Isaac Julien (GB, 1960) revolves around issues within world politics and how they affect personal lives. In the installation Western Union: Small Boats (The Leopard) (2007), Julien orchestrates a poetic meditation on individual journeys undertaken on a local level within a global scenario. Julien explores the effects of traumatic experiences, both on people and on buildings, monuments, architecture and life, shaping these themes in a dreamlike way in a new construction.
Ragnar Kjartansson, The Man (still), 2010, courtesy of the artist, Luhring Augustine, New York and i8 Gallery, Reykjavik | The EKARD Collection
Ragnar Kjartansson (IS, 1976) puts Pinetop Perkins at the center of his film "The Man" (2010). A blues pianist at age 97, he sits with his piano in the grass against the backdrop of an archetypal wooden "farmhouse" in the American South. He plays his repertoire for an hour. Not always completely pure anymore due to his age, but the music is etched in his soul. You can feel that depth - full of cultural history - in this penetrating performance.
"At Kunsthal KAdE, you can now experience culturally responsible binge-watching, because for the summer exhibition, the Amersfoort museum has assembled eleven video artworks" (The Art Girls)
Christian Marclay (CH, 1955) in the work "Telephones" (1995) experimented for the first time with putting together (ultra-short) clips from feature films into one new (narrative) sequence based on always the same motif, in this case the role of the telephone within feature films. They ring, they are picked up, there is talk and hang up again. But then cut up into moments from 130 films; the ultimate fragmentation of a suggested linear narrative, in which "the telephone" is ultimately the main protagonist.
Hans Op de Beeck, Night Time (still), 2015, Animated Film, Black-and-White, Sound, Full HD Video, 19 minutes 20 seconds, The EKARD Collection, courtesy Galerie Ron Mandos, Amsterdam. Copyright © The Artist
Hans Op de Beeck (BE, 1969) makes sculptures in gray, with which he creates space-filling constellations. He often thinks out the mise-en-scène first in preparatory watercolors. In "Night Time" (2015), he creates with stop motion a silent story constructed from a sequence of his watercolors, a mysterious dream. Op de Beeck's worlds are specific and generic at the same time. They appeal to a universal picture book of images, which everyone experiences in their own way.
Nira Pereg (IL, 1969) filmed a group of flamingos at the Karlsruhe Zoo in "67 Bows" (2006). The flamingos are standing together in a group. Suddenly a bang sounds. All the bird's necks shoot down simultaneously as if on command. And up again. The same with the next bang. Until the necks tighten as soon as the trigger about. Pereg orchestrated the whole situation. She spent a week studying - in the same clothes - the habits and movements of the flamingos in their enclosure. The "soundtrack" of the gun being fired was later added as a "pas de deux" between film and sound.
Tom Pnini (IL, 1981) presents in "Ballade to the Double" (2012) across four screens a ceaseless stretch of track filmed in the four seasons. An archetypal image in cinema for time and passage of time. Four times we see the same journey, always with the same interruption - a girl playing along and on the track - but filmed at four different moments. Simultaneous, parallel, but also each in their own time, creating a sophisticated interaction between "moment" and repetition.
Martin & Inge Riebeek (NL, 1957, NL, 1964)
At Imagine Being There International (2009), people in New York, Shanghai, Nairobi and Cairo were asked to describe their paradise in a few sentences. It is about the encounter with the other, "the richness of the image and the beautiful moment that is very fleeting and unfortunately always too short. The work was purchased at the start of Kunsthal KAdE for the then central hall.
Marijke van Warmerdam, Weather Forecast, 2000, 35 mm film loop, 6'05'', courtesy Annet Gelink Gallery and Galerie van Gelder, Amsterdam
'In Marijke van Warmerdam's hushed video, the seasons alternate' (See All This)
Marijke van Warmerdam (NL, 1959) placed an old-fashioned bathtub in an empty, red-colored room for "Weather Forecast" (2000). It fogs, it rains, the sun shines inside. The wonderful interplay between the serene interior and weather conditions from "outside" ends with an epic finale. A film full of relative calm as well as suspense.
Guido van der Werve, Number nine,The day I didn't turn with the world, 2007, Time-lapse photography to HD video with sound, 8'40", Geographic North Pole, courtesy the artist and GRIMM, Amsterdam | New York
Guido van der Werve (NL, 1977) makes films that can be seen as an "opus. They all have a number. In 'Number Nine' (2007) he stands at the exact point of the North Pole and turns against the rotation of the earth for a full day. Subtitle: "The day I didn't turn with the world. An experience as simple as it was crushing. Van der Werve stood for 24 hours in the bitter cold at Earth's geographic "zero point," making the action not only a challenge of "laws of nature," but also a physical test of endurance. The result is a 'timelapse' of 8 minutes and 40 seconds. Trained as a classical pianist, the artist wrote the accompanying music himself.
This werrelt that so dwarfs, that so dwarfs.
Eeuwigh goes by eyelight.
Joost van den Vondel, 1633
