When I take a seat in Hans Overvliet's studio, I receive the multiple I.D of a shared bullet. This bullet formed of ice, trapped in a small glass container, is the first exchange between me and Hans and emphasizes the active relationship between maker and receiver that is central to his practice. The melting bullet in my hand questions my position. Poetic but critical, this question continues, even when the bullet, now melted into a layer of water, stands between the art books in my cupboard where it slowly dissolves into nothingness and thus escapes being reduced to an art object.
Martha Jager, curator Vleeshal |
January 2023
IN MEMORY OF ULAY [ FRANK UWE LYCOPENE ] 30/11/1943 – 02/03/2020
the poject was conducted jointly with Willy van Houtum
presented in / on:
Luxfer Open Space | Czech Republic | June 11 – August 30, 2021
Juxtapose Art Fair | Aarhus | Denmark | August 20 - 22, 2021
ruimteCAESUUR | Middelburg | December 22, 2021 – January 06, 2022
Studio44 | Stockholm | December 22, 2021 – January 19, 2022
DiEM 25 - DiEM Gallery | web | from January 2022 on
Cinema U 2 - Peace Letter to Ukraine 2 | web | curated by Wilfried Agricola de Cologne and Yarina Butkowska for the Alphabet Art Centre, part of the The New Museum of Networked Art for the project
Peace Letters to Ukraine March 6 – May 31, 2022
AiR Biekorf - Misfigure | Brugges | Belgium | April 21 – May 29 2022
Supermarket Art Fair | Stockholm | Sweden | May 26 - 29, 2022
Slipvillan | on Långholmen in Stockholm | Sweden | June 4 - 18, 2022
Kunstverein projektraum-bahnof25 | Kleve | Germany | November 11, 2022
Verbeke Foundation | Kemzeke | Belgium | November 17, 2024
Click here for the time-laps video
financially supported by Vleeshal
| Česká Skalice | Czech Republic | June 11 2022
Click
the timelaps video
| Aarhus | Denmark | August 20 – 22, 2021
video presentations in Studio44 | Sockholm | Sweden
ruimteCAESUUR | Middelburg | the Netherlands
December 6, 2021 till January 7, 2022.
| the place where art and politics meet
Our Mission
DiEM Voice is a canvas for politically conscious artists of all art disciplines to connect, express themselves, and advocate for DiEM25’svision: onlyborderless societies can bring about true democracy, solidarity and care for the planet.
Artists find in DiEM Voice a common space to reflect together and turn their ideas and creativity into rich political messages that are then promoted all across Europe in the form of campaigns and events.
green transition to a new economic model, and the conviction that transnational action is the only arena to effect durable change.
Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 (DiEM25) is a pan-European movement of democrats, united under the conclusion that the European Union will only survive if it is radically transformed.
To learn more about DiEM25, please visit the main website.
It is through art and culture that DiEM Voice promotes DiEM25’s radical proposals for social justice, transparency, a green transition to a new economic model, and the conviction that transnational action is the only arena to effect change.
| Expo space Poortersloge | Kraanrei 19 contribution to Expect an Occasional Attack … and Flee performance / video | April 21 – May 29, 2022
financially supported by | Stockholm | Sweden May 25 – May 29, 2022
Community support
Financial support
Långholmen | Stockholm | Sweden | June 4 - 19
A walk home from Slipvallen on Långholmen
de roofprintpers | Middelburg | the Netherlands priority – an exhibition on artists stamps
September 30 – October 31, 2022
Kunstverein projektraum-bahnof25 | Kleve | Germany
November 11, 2022
Verbeke Foundation
Westakker 1 | 9190 Kemzeke | Belgium
courtesy of ©Dirk KnickhoffGermany | ©Sylvia
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the making of | 14/11/’24 – 17/11/’24 opening | 17/11/’24
Under contemporary conditions, the assertion of aesthetic autonomy is, in itself, a political claim.
Nicholas Brown1
DISTANT SUFFERING XXI
i.d. of a shared bullet
Reflecting on the conversations during the slow melting of i.d. of a shared bullet, Adorno comes to mind. He too taught me to look at art in a layered, but above all, political way. At the roles of the art producer, the art consumer, and all entities that move in between, the ideological angles in art history, etc. All this of course within the economic paradigm of the ruling class.
Adorno set me on the content of my artistic path with “Art is not a matter of pointing up alternatives but rather resisting, solely through artistic form, the course of the world, which conti-
course of the world, which continues to hold a pistol to the heads of human beings.”2
I also felt almost personally supported by him: Theodor Adorno perhaps came the closest to making the ultimate defence of l'art pour l'art by claiming that “art becomes social by its opposition to society, and it occupies this position only as autonomous art. It criticizes society by merely existing.”3
Back to the beautiful conversations during the melting. My art work i.d. of a shared bullet consists of a frozen ice bullet in a small bottle provided with a cork and a label carrying the title. The bullet is from an AK-47 Kalashnikov. of
touted as "Hot Bullet Shape Mode."
bullet is made with the aid of a mold resembling the cartridge case of an AK-47 Kalashnikov, the most massproduces assault rifle on the planet. The image of this gun is portrayed in many documentations of war. The bullet, one rarely sees. The results on the other hand . . .
the first time in June 2021 in Luxfer Open Space in Česká Skalice, the Czech Republic. As an opening session.
During the Juxtapose Art Fair in Aarhus, Denmark, for the first time my wife Willy and I handed people the art work one on one. We let the melting decide about the time frame: it guided the conversation almost like an hourglass.
Immediately after the little bottle with the frozen bullet leaves the freezer, the ‘decay’ starts: the bullet starts to melt. It melts from a metaphor of a lifethreatening object – a bullet - into a life-creating element: water.
I presented i.d. of a shared bullet for the first time in June 2021 in Luxfer
The people who thawed the bottle in their hands all became emotional after a very short time. First of all they considered the work as beautiful and than –sometimes at a deep personal level –meaningful. Some wanted to stop the process by putting the bottle back into the freezer, others photographed the the freezer, others
ongoing process during our conversation, some tried to minimize skin contact to slow down the melting process. Many lamented that the work confronted them with their own vulnerability in a way almost how Adorno was quoted by Byung-Chul Han in his 'Saving beauty': “We should return to the kind of beauty that makes us (…) in Theodor Adorno’s terms, realizing our own finitude.”4
self – is actually the only one who has seen the art work in an "original" state. The rest of the planet has to trust that the "story" is based in reality, even in truth, that this water was once an ice bullet.
In many cases, the conversation half way down focused on the preliminary result: a small glass bottle with a label and a cork with a little water in it. The owner – apart from the artist himself – is actually the only one who has
So the only “realistic” image is anchored in the owners memory as long as she / he / x remembers that. “Indeed,thisescapefrom realityledto an experience which could (and did) become a powerful force invalidating the actual prevailing bourgeois values, namely by shifting the locus of the individual’s realization from the domain of the performance principle and the inner resources of the human being: pas-
sion, imagination, conscience.”5
On a personal level, the specific work also shows the physical dynamics of my physical present; me being 70 years old and survived cancer, be it with a lot of negative side effects. The vulnerability and transience of myself and others around me are quite realistic facts in my life.
So part of the work of course is shaping my own finitude. An experience I share with all those wonderful people I had the privilege to meet while melting the ice bullet under the watchful eye of Adorno . . .
One of the melted bullets accompanied Azumi Okabe to Niigata City, Japan . . .
Courtesy photo 2022 ©Azumi Okabe
1 Nicholas Brown, The Work of Art in the Age of Its Real Subsumption under Capital, nonsite.org., March 13, 2012
2 Theodor W. Adorno, “Commitment,” in Notes to Literature, Volume Two, ed. Rolf Tiedemann, (New York: Columbia UP, 1974) p. 80
3 Theodor W. Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, eds. Gretel Adorno and Rolf Tiedemann, (Minneapolis: U Minnesota P, 1997) p. 225 – p. 226
4 Byung-Chul Han, Saving Beauty, (Polity, 2018) p. 22 – p. 24
5 Herbert Marcuse, The Aesthetic Dimension: Toward a Critique of Marxist Aesthetics (Boston: Beacon, 1978) p. 4 – p. 5
distant suffering | the project
Since 2013, by means of the ongoing art-series distant suffering, the Dutch artist Hans Overvliet ( Leiden, 1952 ) investigates the role of the media in their (re)presentation of (military) violence. This, in the context of themes as perception, memory and identity formation.
Overvliet uses a various range of media, symbols and codes, bringing together dichotomies like beauty and violence, subtle sophistication and brutality, the sublime and the utter vulgar.
Aspects of power, politics, exclusion, censorship and the connection between artist, artwork and viewer find their place in his multi-faceted concepcepttual oeuvre. The language-image relationship and references to (art) history are always present.
tual oeuvre. The language-image relationship and references to (art) history are always present.
As a reporter, Overvliet was an eyewitness to the events in the Middle East during the 1980s. Of course these experiences resonate in distant suffering.
The transition into art is inspired by the Dutch Artist Armando 1: It is the beauty of evil, ‘die Schönheit des Bösen’, located in the belly of the evil, looking for a place in the wake of evil in order to show himself to me, although it doesn’t amuse me at all. This beauty calls me to transfer the ‘evil’ into the innocent, because of the amoral domain of art.
cause of the amoral domain of art.
Overvliet often works in a participative way with other artists. As an example: people, artists and artists initiatives from over 60 countries joined his poster project i.d. of inequality.
Elements of distant suffering were exhibited in the Netherlands, Belgium, Pakistan, England, France, Italy, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Albania, Germany, Lebanon, the U.S.A., Brazil, Argentina and Sweden.
In 2023, his whole body of paper collages ( 1999 – 2012 ) joined Geert Verbeke’s re-nowned collection of collages and assemblages. h his wife Willy van Houtum, the collages and assemblages.
In 2024 - 2025 the whole oeuvre of distant suffering was exhibited in the museum part of the Verbeke Foundation. All the work will then be included in the permanent collection.
Next to his art-work he is, together with his wife Willy van Houtum, the founder and every day guardian of ruimteCAESUUR, the 29-year old space for contemporary art in Middelburg in the province of Zeeland.
1 Armando, Acknowledgements About Beauty, 1987
Material
Mold ‘hot Bullet Shape Mode’ from Etsy, Hong Kong
061207 1 H14-03-020 1 PL191 129 02 187 A.
Small bottles from Etsy, Hong Kong; High borosilicate glass and cork, volume: 85 oz (25ml), 90 mm x 20 mm; opening: about 13 mm.
Severin GB 8882 - freezer | Steel console 110 x 60 x 60 cm | powder coated
Time-laps video
Production | special thanks to
Willy van Houtum | research, implementation, video, text
Loek Overvliet | console
Jochem Westrate | for CineCityXL productions | time-laps video – stills
Photos
Willy van Houtum, Roman RejholdCZ , Rikard FåhraeusSE , Jan VerhaegheBE ,
Ivan van de CapelleBE , Bärbel PraunDE , Azumi OkabeJP , Ruben HordijkNL/SE , Thierry MortierBE/SE , Masoud ShahsavariSE, Giel Louws
Contact curiositas@zeelandnet.nl | www.hansovervliet.com
Exhibitions | special thanks to Roman Rejhold and Kate Štroblová | curators for Luxfer Open Space | Czech Republic
Sasha Rose Richter | Pamela Grombacher | Jacob Juhl | Cecilie Bernts curators for the Juxtapose Art Fair | Aarhus | Denmark
Rikard Fåhraeus | curator for team Studio44 | Stockholm | Sweden
teamCAESUUR | Middelburg | the Netherlnds
Wilfried Agricola de Cologne and Yarina Butkowska curators The New Museum of Networked Art
Jan Verhaeghe | curator for CultuurCentrum Brugge | Bruges | Belgium
Kit Hill | curator for DiEM25 / DiEm Gallery – website
Alice Máselníková | Andreas Ribbung
creative Directors Supermarket Independent Art Fair Stockholm | Sweden
Rikard Fåhraeus and team
The artist-house Slipvillan on Långholmen | Stockholm | Sweden
Leni van den Berge | owner of de roofprintpers | Middelburg | the Netherlnds
Dirk D. Knickhoff, Elisabeth Schink, Ulrike E.W. Scholder
Vorstand/Kunstbeirat Kunstverein projektraum-bahnof25 | Kleve | Germany
Geert Verbeke, Marie Verboven (curator) | Verbeke Foundation | Kemzeke | Belgium
Financial support
Supermarket Independent Art FairSweden: Mondrian Fund
Luxfer OpenSpace Czech Republic and Juxtapose Art Fair AarhusDenmark:
SBKM / Vleeshal
SlipvillanSweden: Kulturrådet | Region Stockholm
Kunstverein projektraum-bahnof25 | KleveGermany: SBKM / Vleeshal
back page | people from Commons from Belgrade / Serbia at Supermarket Stockholm Independent Art Fair | May 2022
I would never had imagined that so little water would mean so much to me.
