29 November 2013–11 January 2014
Galerie Fons Welters
Bloemstraat 140
1016 LJ Amsterdam
T (+31) 20 423 30 46
F (+31) 20 423 30 47
mail [at] fonswelters.nl
Galerie Fons Welters is proud to invite you to Saskia Noor van Imhoff’s first solo exhibition, #+14.00 (1).
Zooming in and out, resizing, translating and unfolding. It’s only a short list of a formal and associative systems, which Saskia Noor van Imhoff (b. 1982) applies to existing artworks and artifacts, allocating them a new place in her landscapes of sculptures and photographs. Central to Van Imhoff’s artistic practice are the elements one usually associates with the the ‘hidden side’ of the museum: conservation, reconstruction, replicas, the depot, the design of an exhibition, the architecture and the museum lay out. What happens to the meaning and reading of the original work in these constantly changing situations? And how do these different contexts relate to a new space? Van Imhoff breaks with the existing or anticipated hierarchy, plays out the individual elements and provides them with a renewed meaning and value.
For #+14.00 (1)—her first solo exhibition at Galerie Fons Welters—Van Imhoff builds upon her previous exhibition # +12.00 in Burg Bentheim. She examines the formal properties of a painting by Ruisdael (following an installation of Willem de Rooij), dissects dimensions, materials, colors, and unfolds the original in a new installation. For her exhibition in the gallery, the documentation of # +12.00 becomes the direct object and is overlain by a geometrical pattern of primary colors, which themselves refer back to the buildup of a color photo. Direct architectural elements, metal frames, are scattered through the space, invoking their previous context they are now both a drawing in—and of space.
This spatial drawing returns in another map laid out on the gallery’s floor, formed by tightly carved marble slabs. The sometimes calm, sometimes wild drawing on the marble itself becomes cartographic, while it simultaneously defines a space and based on an existing floor plan (of Berlin’s archeology museum, the Pergamon).
Although the numerical title of this exhibition, #+14.00 (1), at first instance gives little information, it plays directly with the systematic approach that through time, Van Imhoff has made her own, and the seriality that it carries within. The footnote incorporates this system by a direct reference to the stratification, but also the referentiality within her installations. In #+14.00 (1) Saskia Noor van Imhoff connects these various elements according to its very own golden section.
–Laurie Cluitmans
Saskia Noor van Imhoff lives and works in Amsterdam and Berlin. She studied at Rietveld Academie (2004–2008) and was resident artist at De Ateliers (2010–2012). In 2008 she won the GRA Prize (Gerrit Rietveld Academie Prize); this year she was nominated for the Volkskrant Beeldende Kunstprijs 2013, for which she exhibited at the Stedelijk Museum Schiedam. Recent exhibitions include: Ruisdael Stipendium i.c.w. Willem de Rooij, Bad Bentheim, (2013), Language Leaps, Plan B, Berlijn; Less is More, More or Less, TENT, Rotterdam; R&D Department of Black Mountain College show, W139, Amsterdam (2012). Upcoming solo exhibition: De Appel Art Centre Amsterdam (2014).
This installation, #+14.00 (1), was produced during a residency period in Kunstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin which is supported by the Mondriaan Fund.
With special thanks to Gert Jan van Rooij and Contronics.
(1) A. A violent order is disorder; and B. A great disorder is an order. These two things are one. (Pages of illustrations.)
(Wallace Stevens, “Connoisseur of Chaos” in Collected Poems. Faber & Faber.)
