Marcel Broodthaers | The Marcel Broodthaers cabinet

Posted on 20/05/2011 by W&V

MARCEL | The Marcel Broodthaers cabinet is a proposal to present the oeuvre of artist Marcel Broodthaers in the S.M.A.K. museum. The increasing significance of Broodthaers’ work as part of the collection gradually led to the idea of giving this oeuvre a permanent place in the museum. A place where the Broodthaers collection would not only be displayed, but also documented and set in a specific framework. Not as a monument or mausoleum in which the work is enclosed, but more like an intimate setting where encounters can take place and where Broodthaers’ work can be studied. To achieve this, in 2006 the museum held a competition in which three architects were asked to come up with a design for the project. The proposal ultimately selected was by architecten de vylder vinck taillieu. Their design devotes plenty of attention to Broodthaers’ work, but it combines it with the ease and practicality of a study centre. In terms of its form, the design clearly refers to the display cabinet, which Broodthaers used a great deal. This gallery is located on the boundary between the museum and the Floralia Hall behind it. This is also where the exhibition entitled MARCEL/Het Broodthaerskabinet will be held.
The exhibition in the Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Gent Belgium will run until the 5Th of June 2011.

Photos by: S.M.A.K. – Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst | Marcel Broodthaers |

Exhibition | Zeitgeist & Glamour | NRW Forum

Posted on 29/04/2011 by W&V

Legendary images of the 60s and 70s are brought together in the ‘Zeitgeist & Glamour’ exhibition at the NRW-Forum in Düsseldorf; the most spectacular photographs of an exciting era: the icons of an age, superstars and celebrities, and unmistakable milieux. There are both masterful photographs of the highest aesthetic order, ground-breaking in their finesse, and cheerful snapshots of a hidden world. Images of a culture celebrating itself in the midst of fame and glamour, wallowing in the pleasure of a beautiful moment. The pictures embody the spirit of the hour, the attitude of an entire generation. Public and private alike are captured, as are faces and atmospheres, the extravagant and the usual, glamour and its complement: melancholy and forlornness. The Zeitgeist & Glamour exhibition offers a kaleidoscope of life forms from the 60s and 70s that centres on the ‘stages’ of the major cities of the Western world.

The exhbition Zeitgeist & Glamour at the NRW forum in Düsseldorf will run until may 15, 2011.

See also an earlier posted article on the Warmenhoven & Venderbos Blog about David Bailey.

Photos: NRW Forum | Video: Ralph Goertz and Institut für Kunstdokumentation |

Testcuts | Projected Data Images Art Installation

Posted on 20/02/2011 by W&V

Katharina Sieverding , a German artist, made with her Art installation: projected data images Test-cuts for the first time a comprehensive and fascinating review of her photographic archives. Basis of this work were not Photo negatives but Test-cuts which are actually fragmentary by-products of the analog photographic enlargement process. These random images from over 1,800 photos where assembled in digital montages and provide an anti-historical, personal memorial construction of people, exhibitions and happenings in the Düsseldorf and international art scene starting from the year 1966 and running to our current time.

Photos and video: Ralph Goertz and IKS | Katharina Sieverding | Curator: Renate Buschmann | NRW Forum

Permutations Software generating poems by Brion Gysin

Posted on 02/08/2010 by W&V

New York based artist Joseph Moore wrote the software “Permutations” for the currently running exhibition Brion Gysin: Dream Machine on display at The New Museum for Contemporary Art in New York. The Exhibition is a retrospective of the work of the painter, performer, poet, and writer Brion Gysin (born 1916, Taplow, UK–died 1986, Paris). Working simultaneously in a variety of mediums, Gysin was an irrepressible inventor, serial collaborator, and subversive spirit whose considerable innovations continue to influence musicians and writers, as well as visual and new media artists today.

The “Permutations” software by Joseph Moore is a “version” of the program developed by Ian Sommerville and Gysin in 1960 to permute poems. Moore has attempted to create a realization of the work that is sensitive to the original and its process. At the same time, it is a new version, a collaboration done in the spirit of an artist whose work provides a critique of conventional notions of authorship. Moore believes that it is also in the spirit of the work to share copies of it and made his “Permutations” Software avilable to download from Github. The concept and artistic process of this project is fascinating.

Below you find a podcast of the original “I am that I am” poem.

Software by Joseph Moore | Brion Gysin: Dream Machine | Poem by: Brion Gysin | Ubuweb

Wade Guyton | conceptual monochrome paintings

Posted on 25/06/2010 by W&V

Currently the museum Ludwig in Cologne, Germany is showing an interesting exhibition from work of American artist Wade Guyton. The monochrome planes, stripes and bars, which Guyton has recently begun using very often, are computer-generated. The colour black and the letter X have become signature motifs in his work. These newer paintings by Wade herald the modernist motif par excellence: the monochrome. The classical monochromes by Alexander Rodchenko or Robert Ryman had already served to reduce painting to its essence: color, canvas, and frame. It can be assumed that Guyton’s monochrome bars, even when they appear in larger complexes, have a similar objective to that of Rodchenko and Ryman, namely self-reflective painting. However where other artists have used brushes, light, sounds or even metaphors to paint, Wade started (ab) using an inkjet printer. As medium he started out with paper but moved to canvas. He prints the elementary geometric forms he uses over and over again by feeding the canvas into the printer again and again. This sometimes causes the print head to lose grip. These errors in the printing process produce elisions and streaks.

Guyton follows a strict plan; it is for instance important that the dimensions of each canvas be adapted to the technical details and the space in question. And although the width of all the artist’s works produced on the printer is the same, the length is oriented to the architecture of the exhibition room.

The exhibition in the museum Ludwig is curated by Dr. Julia Friedrich and will run until 22-08-2010