territory: contemporary art from the Netherlands

contemporary art from the Netherlands

2000.8.2 [Thu] - 10.9 [Mon]

"Territory" examined afresh to mark 400 years of Japanese-Dutch relations

This year, 2000, is the 400th anniversary of the beginning of the relationship between Japan and the Netherlands. During Japan's period of national isolation, when she closed herself off from any contact with other nations, her dealings with the Dutch, confined to the island of Dejima, gave Japan a small window on the outside world. The limited quantities of merchandise and the snippets of information the Dutch brought with them must have sparked much speculation in the minds of Japanese people about the wide, faraway outside world they could only visit in imagination. Now, four hundred years later, the circumstances surrounding our two nations are dramatically different. Technology has made huge advances, and an information network extends over the planet. Consequently, our modern world allows people, goods and information to flow back and forth over the globe at great speeds and in large quantities, and our sense of the world's hugeness has been eroded to a mere shadow of its former self. Our modern cities grow by spreading their vitality not only horizontally but vertically too. Our new ability to communicate using computer networks is beginning to foster a sense of the virtual world, adding a further layer of complexity to our awareness of space. This exhibition explores our ideas about "territory" against the background of this changing reality.

Experience space by jumping, shaking, or lying down to sleep

As well as being a watchword of our modern, increasingly urbanized society, the word "territory" also evokes Japan's historical connection with the Netherlands, once a point of contact and a boundary with the world beyond. This theme has been explored by a total of seven internationally-active Dutch artists, five individuals and two who work together. In the "Territory" exhibition, modern awareness of space is explored through their thoughts and sensibilities.

The works created by these artists for the space in the Tokyo Opera City Gallery all address the relationship between space and the human body. Each work becomes a device for experiencing space, heightening our awareness of space -- usually regarded as no more than somewhere to park our physical selves from day to day -- and creating an expanse that hints at our connectedness with other people. A major feature of this exhibition is its interactive element: the viewer is drawn in to become an important part of the artwork.

Bik Van der Pol
These two Rotterdam-based artists (Liesbeth Bik and Jos van der Pol) have been working in collaboration since 1994. Their works, re-creations of existing spaces and interiors, displayed in art museums and galleries, do not merely reproduce physical constructions, but also copy their functions and uses, in an ongoing attempt to tease out the essential meaning and purpose of these spaces. The pair exhibited works in the "On the Sublime" exhibition (Malme) in 1999, and took part in the P.S.1's studio program in New York from 1999 to 2000.

Sleep with Me

"Sleep with Me"
1997/2000
Photo by SAKURAI Tadahisa

"Sleep With Me"

Inside the gallery, a thirty-mat tatami-covered platform, complete with Japanese-style pillows, invites the viewer to lie down and take a nap. Straying to the walls, the eye encounters the moving image of a soundly-sleeping person projected onto a screen.
This work, entitled "Sleep With Me", recreates a project carried out by Bik/Van der Pol in 1997, and the movie on the screen is Andy Warhol's dreamlike early minimalist silent movie, "Sleep". By inducing the viewer to lie down on the tatami floor, and, gazing at a stranger's sleeping image, allow his or her own sleeping form to be seen by other viewers, the work recursively blurs the boundaries between the private and the public. Lulled into real drowsiness while watching the image, the viewer is also invited to stray into the gulf between consciousness and unconsciousness.

Aernout Mik
Using images showing the same action endlessly repeated, stripped of narrative, and displaying them in a space like the inside of some huge apparatus, Aernout Mik imparts strangeness and mystery to the viewer's physical sensations themselves. He represented the Netherlands in the 1997 Venice Biennale, took part in the 1999 Melbourne Biennale, and in 2000, a large-scale solo exhibition of his work was staged at the Van Abbe Museum (Eindhoven).

"Organic Escalator"
2000
Photo by SAKURAI Tadahisa

Still photo from video installation

"Organic Escalator"

Aernout Mik's video installations are strikingly characterized by strange actions repeatedly performed by people whose apparent lack of emotional expression makes them seem almost puppet-like. The viewer, drawn in by the simple action endlessly repeated in a silent image, and surrounded by the strangely mechanical space in which the video footage is displayed, is somehow induced to doubt the evidence of his or her own physical senses. The image, sometimes projected below the viewer's eyeline, makes the viewer feel that, instead of facing the work from another dimension, he or she is being drawn, feet-first, into the image.

In "Organic Escalator", the video image is projected onto the furthest wall of a tunnel-like structure, six feet long.
Within the image, showing an escalator as jam-packed as any rush-hour commuter train, an earthquake is occurring. The viewer, approaching the far wall of the "tunnel", feels an unsettling sensation underfoot, and gradually realizes that this is due to the fact that the entire "tunnel" moving back and forth. This feels very like the momentary disorientation we have all experienced while sitting in a stationary train, and seeing another train moving past, making it seem, for a few seconds, that our train is in motion while the other is still. The video footage itself, reinforcing the idea that an earthquake is in progress, is acutely disquieting.

Mark Manders
Since 1986, Mark Manders has been involved in drawing the plans for an imaginary building that he has titled "Self Portrait". These works depict objects placed in the imaginary rooms, and his imagination gives visual form to a condensed version of his personal world-view. Solo exhibitions of Manders' work have been staged at the De Appel in Antwerp in 1994, at the De Appel Contemporary Art Center (Amsterdam) in 1997, and works by this artist represented the Netherlands at the Sao Paulo Biennale.

"Silent Factory"
2000
Photo by Sakurai Tadahisa

"Fox / mouse/ belt"
(Fragment from the self-portrait as a building)
Canvas, silicon rubber
120 x 40 x18cm
1992

"Silent Factory", "Fox / mouse/ belt", "A Nice Way to Start a Brand-New Day", "Small Trick with Insects", "Tokyo Newspaper" Fragment from self-portrait as a building

Drawing the imaginary floor plan for his "self-portrait", conceived as a "territory" in his own imagination, Manders has made manifest objects from various rooms, in the form of works of art. This exhibition will feature one of the rooms from Manders' imaginary house: the new living-room, which has occupied him for over three years. In this space made of metal and wood, appearing, at first glance, to be some sort of factory, there are sculptures of cats, foxes and other small animals, along with highly-personal items for which the artist feels affection -- such as a pencil, a cup and other objects used in the artist's everyday life -- connected by the thread of the artist's imagination, so that they seem to add up to a natural whole.

This is not merely a large installation: the small works dotted around it are placed in such a way that they connect spaces, and Mark Manders' marked-out territory unfolds before us.

Jeanne van Heeswijk
This artist is engaged in ongoing projects which, encouraging the viewer to participate, take form through communication. Her main projects include "Hotel New York", (P.S.1 Studio, 1998-99) -- which physically recreated, in New York, a particular room from the Hotel New York overlooking Rotterdam Harbor, and used this room to hold an "artists residence program" encouraging cultural exchange between Rotterdam and New York -- and "NEsTWORK", staged in 1996 as part of Manifesta 1 (Rotterdam).
as part of Manifesta 1

Draw a Line

"Draw a Line"
2000
Photo by SAKURAI Tadahisa

"Draw a Line"
"True Life Story"

"Draw a Line" is based on a traditional "war" game played by Dutch children. The rules of this game are simple: each player throws a stick into the sand, and the point where the stick lands marks the boundary of that player's "territory". In this work, this simple act draws the viewer's attention to the concept of "territory" forming the theme of this Exhibition. Physically, "Draw a Line" consists of a sandpit, 6 meters square, installed in the gallery: as well as forming the setting for a game, it is also a flat, almost two-dimensional sculpture bearing a strong resemblance to works in the Dutch constructivist tradition, by Mondriaan, Malewicz and others. The other element of the work -- a completely "non-arty" game -- is so simple that anyone can play, offering an amusement allowing the realm of communication to extend outward.

"True Life Story" is a documentary video project from van Heeswijk's "Room with a View" series. In this project, a foldaway mobile room on wheels, consisting of four walls and a door, is brought to various locations -- those visited so far have included art galleries, art spaces, and an institution housing psychiatric patients -- where it is used as a space for collaboration between the artist and the public. The walls of this mobile room, appearing abruptly in a new location, create boundaries between "outside" and "inside", and between private and public space, and bring into question the meaning of these boundaries. On the video, a narrator recounts stories of the artist's collaborators and the ways they have related to the room when the project was brought to different locations and different contexts.

Job Koelewijn
Job Koelewijn, who finds an important source of inspiration in cultural clashes between his own background and other places in which he finds himself, has produced works in a wide variety of styles. His works, which include a wall completely coated in talcum powder, and a revolving door built out of stock cubes, stimulate other senses besides vision. Works by this artist, currently based in New York, were featured in the Venice Biennale and the Melbourne International Biennale in 1999.

"Higher Goals"
2000
Photo by SAKURAI Tadahisa

"Higher Goals"

Human movement in an art gallery normally occurs solely in the horizontal direction, as the visitors mill around looking at the art works, but in this work, Koelewijn allows the viewer to move vertically as well.

Territory -- the title of this Exhibition -- not only extends outwards in the horizontal plane, but also thrusts upwards, like the skyscrapers that seem to vie with one another in modern cityscapes. Koelewijn's ideas direct our awareness towards the vertical dimension of territory. By inducing us to move beyond the passive experience of looking, to the active experience of using our physicality, they prompt us to explore our spatial sense more directly, and bring us into contact with less familiar aspects of space, like outer space, extending to infinity in the dark.

The space that opens up before the jumping viewer is also a prolog to this infinity. The work features four round trampolines, each about three meters across, placed inside the gallery. A false floor is installed flush with the trampoline surfaces, so the viewers can stand on a trampoline without having to climb up. A false ceiling is also installed, and directly above each trampoline, a hole with the same diameter is cut in the ceiling, so that when a person jumps on a trampoline, their head disappears into the hole at the zenith of their jump. This makes it seem as if the viewer is jumpin g into the darkness of a black hole in the cosmos.

Suchan Kinoshita
Suchan Kinoshita lived in Tokyo until the age of 19, and then studied music and drama in Germany. Moving to the Netherlands, she became seriously active as an artist for the first time. Her works include dramatic elements with constantly-shifting realities, and the viewer's own involvement typically constitutes a major feature. Some of her works were featured at SITE Santa Fe in 1997 (Santa Fe), and at the Carnegie International (Pittsburg) in 1999. A solo exhibition of her work was staged at The Ginza Artspace in 2000.

The only featured artist unable to visit Japan for this Exhibition, Suchan Kinoshita will relay her artistic interpretations of the "territory" theme one by one from the Netherlands over the Exhibition period. Arriving from the faraway Netherlands, these deceptively simple ideas -- the words "this is my place" written in a child's handwriting, words spoken by someone the artist saw in Berlin, and so on -- will inspire us to think about the concept of territory in a variety of new ways.

Information

Dates: Wednesday 2 August, 2000 - Monday 9 October, 2000
Opening Hours: 12:00 - 20:00 (to 21:00 on Fridays and Saturdays, entry up to 30 minutes before closing)
Closed: Mondays (Tuesday if the Monday is a public holiday), year-end/new year, General closing days (twice a year)

Admission: Ordinary:900 yen (700 yen), College and high school students: 700 yen (550yen), Junior high and elementary school students: 500 yen (400 yen), Children below school age: free
*Admission includes entrance for Terada Gallery
*Amounts in brackets ( ) are rates for groups 15 or more.

Organizered by the Tokyo Opera City Cultural Foundation
Sponsored by Nippon Life Insurance Company / NTT Urban Development Co. /Odakyu Railway
Grant from Mondriaan Foundation / Pola Art Foundation / Japan Arts Fund
Supported by Royal Netherlands Embassy
Co-curation with Yukie Kamiya

For further information: Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery Tel. +81-3-5353-0756