coffee,
cake and sauerkraut (a weekend of art in amsterdam)
commentary and image by Karin Bos
published
23 january 2009 Bohemian Aesthetic e-zine, Los Angeles
amsterdam
dispatch | volume 1 •
number 4
The Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam's main
institute for modern art, has been closed for renovation for quite
some time now. In an attempt not to entirely water down its
significance, it opened a temporary space—SMCS—now closed, too.
So, nowadays, the The Stedelijk collection is homeless, stored in an
undisclosed location, and the construction site at Museum Square
doesn't look as if it will be ready anytime soon. Now and then, parts
of the collection pop up in various places around town. Presently,
the Van Gogh Museum is hosting a show of French fauvists and German
expressionists.
Also, to touch base with the public,
the Stedelijk invented the 'Bouwkeet'. It's a small container based
on those in which construction site workers have lunch or that are
commonly used for storage. The Bouwkeet is traveling through town
until the re-opening of the Stedelijk Museum in what looks to be
2010. Its current location is the riverside in Amsterdam North. It's
so small that no actual art works can be displayed there, and only 15
people can fit inside. It merely functions as a coffee corner and
info desk, as opposed to an alternative exhibition space.
Recently, after having a coffee at the
Bouwkeet, I went to the other riverbank to attend the two day group
show 'Route 88' at Dek West/De Bonte Zwaan, an exhibition space and
artists studio located in a former sailing company building that
floats in Amsterdam's river IJ.
The 11 participating artists of "Route
88" all graduated in 1988 from the Amsterdam Academy of Fine
Art's Department of Painting, Drawing and Printing. They kept in
touch for 20 years and celebrated this with an anniversary show. Next
to the cake, paintings, drawings, and prints, the exhibit also
contained jewellery, varied objects, and photography. The artists
only showed their current work, so it wasn't possible to compare it
to their graduation pieces and assess the development in their work.
Noor van der Brugge presented several
artists' books, among which I discovered the linoleum cut and
letterpress 'They all of them know', based on a poem by Charles
Bukowski. I always admire artists who have the patience to print
books by hand, page by page. 'They all of them know' is an edition
comprised of nine copies; that's do-able.
But I also know of a book, by Dutch
artist Helga Kos, that was worked on for five years! That
time-consuming project began with a simple commission to create a CD
cover. 'Ode aan de Kolossale Zon' is based on 'Last Poems of Wallace
Stevens' and contains, beside the CD artwork, 150 hand-printed pages
made from several printing techniques in an edition of 288 copies. I
visited Kos while she was working on it in the printing studio at
Rijksacademie, and she looked like a monk…an anachronism in this
21st century art world with all of its newfangled media. The students
at Rijksacademie even called her 'the dinosaur', she informed me.
Another show I visited the same weekend
of 'Route 88' was 'Salon Fantastique', a one-day affair at Just van
der Loos' studio. Van der Loos displayed his installations alongside
ceramic sculptures by Gerrit-Jan van Ham.
The theme of this campy party/show was
'German style'. Both artists were dressed in lederhosen, and the
music, food, drinks, invitation card, everything was…you guessed
it…in German style. "Rauchen erlaubt" (smoking allowed),
read the card, typical of van Ham's humor, also quite evident in his
art. His ceramic figures of over-the-top divas, bodybuilders, drunks,
and gossiping sisters, all grouped in a dollhouse, are whimsical and
smile-inducing, simultaneously wrapped up in recognition and
compassion. No cynicism—just, in his own (German) words, "Super!
Spitze! Toll!"
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| Sisters by Gerrit Jan van Ham |
