DELFT OP ZICHT

artist-in-residence project

delft op zicht

artist-in-residence project

delft op zicht

In August and September 2013 id11 organized the Artist-in-Residence project DELFT OP ZICHT within the European network CreArt. CreArt is a collaborative venture between 12 European cities.

The project refers to the painting ‘View of Delft’ by Vermeer and challenges artists to make contemporary variants. Eight European artists were selected on the basis of their project proposal, in which the relationship with Delft was visible. The selected artists explored Delft and sampled the city ‘on trial basis’ for two months.

DELFT OP ZICHT has several meanings. It is a twist of the title of the Vermeer painting ‘View of Delft’ ((ge)ZICHT OP DELFT). In DELFT OP ZICHT the words are in a different order. ‘Op zicht’ means ‘on trial’, as when you have something on trial for a test period. After this test period, one can decide to keep what was tested or to return it.

In 2010, the first edition of id11 DELFT OP ZICHT was organized in the Kadmium Art Centre and this edition was held there again. Kadmium is housed in an old school building. It has four classrooms, a small staircase, a beautiful hall with a long corridor, and a square in front of it. During the regular opening hours of Kadmium, the artworks in development could be seen by visitors. The participating artists presented their work every Friday afternoon during the series of artist talks “bij_wijze_van_SPREKEN”.

A special feature of this AiR project was that each artist liaised with a curator for two months. The curator and the artist could have practical or substantive discussions. DELFT OP ZICHT concluded with a final presentation in the form of a public show. id11 would like to thank the artists and curators for their commitment, enthusiasm and hard work during the project. We were impressed, surprised and intrigued by the works.

With this booklet we hope to give you a good impression of the project. id11 Rolina Nell, Paul Giesen and Aline Baggio

the crisis of everything and everywhere

alexander glandien

Satellietgroep enjoyed collaborating with Alexander Glandien in the role of associated curator in connection with his proposal “The crisis of everything and everywhere to the Dutch context in regard to our tradition and culture in water management”. Water is the most abundant and manipulated element we have in the Netherlands. We master and control it around the clock to keep our land dry and fruitful. A regulated system of pumping stations, dykes and polders prevents critical flooding. However, we appear to be reassured by the constantly improving engineering that our land is safe from flooding. In Alexander Glandien’s work you can experience what happens when a fault or error in a water system emerges. How to act or interact if these over-regulated conditions fail?

In the man-controlled water systems in the Netherlands, Glandien’s intervention questions the measure of our control over water and also refers to the loss of control in general. In an everyday office setting, the ceiling leaks as water seeps through and, drop by drop, accumulates into a constellation of household buckets, as though this is meant to be. In this poetic visual intervention, listening closely to the soundscape of the water is even more confronting.

During the DELFT OP ZICHT residency, informal and inspirational conversations took place between Glandien and Satellietgroep. We discussed the idea of to what extent the manipulation of environments can develop. And what are the hidden effects we set in motion by the changes we make to our everyday environment? Do we still have the luxury of prolonging and extending this process, attempting to find better and even more elaborate solutions to manage the crisis of everything, everywhere?

Satellietgroep is an international, artist-run network that explores, through artistic research, how the sea and waterways influence cities, people, communities and environments. With our international Artist-in-Residence programs, ‘Badgast’ and ‘Now Wakes The Sea’, we cooperate with partners, artists and scientists.

The Artist-in-Residence programs function as an alternative source for collecting knowledge. We connect contemporary research and new works to historic and future coastal developments. We share local knowledge on a global level and act as a catalyst in generating public and professional discussions during public events such as film festivals, exhibitions, workshops and presentations at expert conferences.

Ronald de Boer

the crisis of everything and everywhere alexander glandien linz, austria glandienale.de

delft red

amaya bombÍn

The Spanish artist Amaya Bombín prompts us to look at our environment afresh by introducing subtle accents into our surroundings. These accents take various forms but are always brought in using the colour red: the roots of a tree, a pile of rocks in a deserted landscape, the drawing of a painting from the Prado.

Through the use of the colour red, Bombín is directing our gaze and transforming the ordinary into something special. Her interventions are seemingly simple actions but have a major impact, in particular thanks to the signalling function of the colour red.

Amaya Bombín is an artist who leaves the artist’s studio and with her work enters the public space. This is where she finds her inspiration and her work is often literally placed within this public space. It was rather to be expected that Bombín would make the historical city centre of Delft the focal point of her activities during her residency period. This is especially true if we consider her research about the dichotomy between the inside and the outside in Dutch 17th century paintings. However, the environment around her accommodation in Delft – a suburban area with modern apartment buildings currently under renovation – was just as inspiring for her. In her work she has managed to combine these two environments as well as the inside / outside dichotomy in a unique way.

Lengths of red thread wind with poetic beauty along the canals in the city centre of Delft. These fleeting interventions of Bombín in the public space provoked the admiration of passers-by and were captured in a series of photographic works. In the suburban area, the lengths of red thread expand indoors in an apartment block and interconnect some of the abandoned interiors. By opting for empty living spaces, Amaya Bombín seems to comment on the 17th-century painters. In their paintings, they placed the man outside in the city, and the woman inside in the house. The living spaces of Bombín seem abandoned; abandoned in the same way that she has left her studio vacant and has chosen for the outdoor space.

Coen de Jong

delft red amaya bombĂ­n valladolid, spain bombin.es

koornmarkt 48f, westvest 147, prinses irenetunnel

Dovile BernadiĹ iute

Dovile BernadiĹĄiute is a young artist, freshly graduated from the Gerrit Rietveld Art Academy, who is trying to find her way within the art world. She took this residency as an opportunity to further develop her graduation project.

In our first meeting, it became clear that Dovile is searching for a balance between wearable objects and artistic installations. The core concept of her work always offers a translation of the direct surroundings in relation to the body. Within these two extremes she investigates the space in-between and the bizarre discrepancy between an organically shaped body and the architectural angularity of buildings in general.

In Delft she applied her techniques on surfaces that have a lot of history. Based on these findings, she created a collection of work that deals with the relationship between architectural space and the human body. The nature of materials is one of the most important aspects of her research, as well as how this relation with space can be expressed in materials. She worked with many different techniques, exploring their limits, and she questioned the way that materials define architectural spaces in contrast to the human body.

Delft is a very old, historic city sustained by a lot of construction. She amplified this feeling by stripping many colourful layers of graffiti paint from a wall and making this paint into jewellery that makes you feel the weight of history. Secondly, she designed wall hangings, based on the contra-shapes from castings of exterior walls in Delft, literally stripping the decay from the wall and leaving a beautiful map of different layers in time.

We encouraged her to take a more extreme approach in her experiments, translating this conversation between body and architecture further. Her eye for detail was clearly visible in the final installation, where big, simple gestures and detailed objects became jewellery for the body.

Floor Cornelisse and Anique Weve

koornmarkt 48f, westvest 147, prinses irenetunnel dovile bernadišiute

vilnius, lithuania ---

holy shuttle

Leonard Sherifi

The image which inspired Leonard Sherifi’s ‘Holy Shuttle’ was the New Church on Vermeer’s painting. The church has suffered many changes during the centuries; the style of the tower, especially, was changed in accordance with prevailing taste. The little stocky tower of Vermeer took the shape of a space shuttle under the analytical hand of Sherifi.

Like the church – a means of communication between the profane and the divine – the space shuttle represents a human effort to reach beyond the sky.

Both are borne by the community. Leonard embedded his Holy Shuttle in the local community of Delft by placing collecting boxes throughout the city for bottle tops and assembling the shuttle, top by top. Leonard connected all these different bottle tops by colour using white thread, elevating his tower, his Holy Shuttle. The analogies between the church and the shuttle are numerous; for example, just like the bricks in an arch, the caps are connected to each other; held in place by a huge stress and forming the skin of the sculpture. Leonard Sherifi’s Space Shuttle goes beyond recycling art and creates a spiritual experience by means of the light, exterior textile. The form, the material and the aesthetics respond to the condition of the modern spiritual man: the individual, personal way to escape the daily routine. The colourful Space Shuttle is simply a visual pleasure, a joyful light installation.

Réka Deuten-Makkai

holy shuttle leonard sherifi genoa, italy leonardsherifi.com

and then i just bumped into it

Lieke Snellen

What if objects from the public space lose their function when they are deconstructed and reconstructed? Lieke Snellen shows a different view or pattern of these objects we take for granted and she invites the viewer to interact with them in this new situation.

During her residency in Delft, Lieke took an active approach to acquiring street furniture from the local council. She was given full access to quite a number of different objects that were in stock. Her idea of transforming these objects into an installation or individual sculptures became visible by playful experiment on the outdoor square and in her studio. By moving, assembling and taking away, and with quite simple adjustments, Lieke is able to turn these robust forms and materials into poetic sculptures that move me and let me see an exciting, contrasting environment. The work does not pretend to be other than what it is; it is about harmony, order and simplicity. Yet it challenges architecture, formality, structure and how we relate to it.

Our meetings were organic with inspiring talks and always focussed on the process of Lieke’s work. Although the assignment was set out as an artist-curator relationship, we were equal and open-minded. It was a pleasure to work with Lieke and I am grateful to have been asked by id11 to participate in DELFT OP ZICHT 2013.

Iris Cornelis

and then i just bumped into it lieke snellen rotterdam, netherlands liekesnellen.com

destination journey

Nino Strohecker

When I saw Nino Strohecker’s documentation I was immediately hooked. I liked the diversity of his projects, his use of film and video and the boldness of his presentation. I put him as number 1 on my list and was very glad Nino and I were linked for the Delft project. Our first meeting on 9 August started off as if we were simply continuing an earlier conversation. We met several times, either in Rotterdam or Delft, where he showed me the respective steps of his project.

We discussed his progress.

I liked the fact that at, an early stage, he aborted his initial plan to use found footage of the City and its inhabitants. It showed his flexibility to adapt to new circumstances. He chose to focus on two specific phenomena that he encountered in his temporary residency: bikes and coffee shops. This resulted in a hallucinatory registration of multiple bike rides over two months from his temporary home to Kadmium, the final place of the presentation.

Our conversations were enjoyable and fruitful. I learned something about the Berlin club scene and Nino’s ambition to mix fine art with the so-called lower culture. His work ‘Destination Journey’ combines images that could grace an art gallery with music that can be heard in the hippest clubs in Kreuzberg.

The visits to Delft also brought other artists to my attention and I had several chats with many of the other resident artists. This was a very nice fringe benefit to meeting Nino.

Piet de Jonge

destination journey nino strohecker berlin, germany victims.at

preserve(definition): to resist decomposition

Ruta Butkute

During the id11 residency project, Ruta Butkute focused on her ongoing research; one might call it, in short, an exploration of found objects: their different forms, shapes and functionalities. However, Butkute’s installation, as presented in Delft, not only spoke about a new nature of the found, ready-made objects, but also unveiled certain artists’ treasures, which had been brought inside with the utmost archaeological care and concentration. Having a background in sculptural studies, in her studio practice Butkute uses her knowledge and skills of working with construction materials such as stone, plaster, clay and metal, to combine them with objects made from plastic, rubber, foam etc. Hence this compilation of self-made or collected pieces often confuses the viewer with regard to their origin; and by doing so, gains a new value as such.

As the starting point for the work produced during the residency, Butkute chose several architectural details from a few monumental buildings in Delft, such as the town hall and the church. She then copied these fragments in plaster and arranged them in a structural composition on the main wall to the right of the space’s entrance. However, the viewer’s first encounter with Butkute’s installation on entering the room was with the mixed-media, ready-made pieces put on provisional tables and pedestals, which were situated in the middle. And while most of the works had been presented as sculptures, the viewer might be struck by two things that, by their nature, slightly differed from the rest; namely a big dark green carpet, like a tapestry hanging on the wall, and a piece of a foam with a tactile pattern, flippantly situated on the floor: maybe a doormat that someone could just have stepped on and moved aside when leaving. As a result, one could only wonder: what can be seen here, what comes directly from the previous function of the space - used by Butkute as her studio in the last two months - and what only reflects it? Thus we wonder: Which of the objects encountered here are real and which are being brought in?

In an almost perfect work / exhibition space, with a high ceiling and plenty of light from large windows, one expects an environment that fits safely in such a frame. Despite that, Butkute’s installation might at first sight have seemed to be unsettled or even unbalanced. True, it asked the viewer for a certain effort, just as the maker did, to undo one’s expectations.

Weronika Zielinska

ruta butkute

kaunas, lithuania rutabutkute.com

preserve(definition): to resist decomposition

landscape

Tvrtko Buric

Tvrtko Buric’s work focuses on the translation of key terms as seen through the history of art, such as drawing, light or landscape. It reflects the issue of drawing in relation to a given time and space.

In almost every case, his drawings involve a process of deconstruction of the image in the space for which it is conceived. These spatial arrangements are nothing but translations, fragmentations and rearrangements of a given image or idea, which only serves as the starting point.

Buric’s installation with the title ‘Landscape’ was the outcome of his time as Artist-in-Residence in Delft. With ‘Landscape’, Buric takes his working process a step further. His reaction to Vermeer’s painting ‘View of Delft’, which was the starting point of the residency program, leads him to consider how to capture the essential movement and time of the contemporary landscape. In his new spatial installation, Buric incorporates a video recording, for the first time depicting the daily routine around a shopping centre. This time, too, he applies his method of adding many different layers of white surfaces floating, as it were, in space. This enables him to create multiple flat surfaces for the projection.

Finally, the image is again fragmented, featuring continually alternating multiple, meaningful pieces of knowledge.

By adding the aspects of movement and time to his work and by manipulating them - slowing down the real-time recording - he not only adds a dramatic effect but also makes time and movement as eternal as the notion of landscape within art and life.

Kiki Petratou

landscape tvrtko buric genoa, italy tvrtkoburic.com

id11

about

id11 organises artist residencies and provides exhibition spaces where artistic experimentation is nurtured.

Foundation of id11 Since 2008, id11 has been organising AiR projects in Delft, The Netherlands.

Empty property is temporarily used as living and working space for (international) artists. The houses, apartments, shops or offices themselves are an important factor in the production of the new artworks. Participating artists create site-specific work that relates to the location. id11 has no permanent living or working space in Delft for the realization of projects but uses what is available or arises to create a plan for a project. id11’s Artist-in-Residence program is dependent on the availability of temporary spaces.

For a specific period of time, depending on the duration of the id11 project, artists work on their own project proposal, sometimes working within a specific theme towards a final public presentation. Artists present their project proposal and explain their work at the recurring artist talks “bij_wijze_van_SPREKEN”.

Artist-in-Residence projects in the CreArt network Since 2013, id11 organizes its Artist-in-Residence project in Delft within the European network CreArt. CreArt is a collaborative venture between 12 European cities: Arad (Romania), Kaunas (Lithuania), Genoa (Italy), Delft (The Netherlands), Harghita County (Romania), Valladolid (Spain), Aveiro (Portugal), Linz (Austria), Kristiansand (Norway), Lecce (Italy), Pardubice (Czech Republic) and Vilnius (Lithuania).

Contact www.id11.nl info@id11.nl P.O. Box 3380 2601 DJ Delft The Netherlands

made possible by

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This publication was printed in an edition of 500 and illustrates the AiR project DELFT OP ZICHT in Delft, The Netherlands, August - September 2013.

Participating artists Alexander Glandien | glandienale.de Amaya Bombín | bombin.es Dovile Bernadišiute Leonard Sherifi | leonardsherifi.com Lieke Snellen | liekesnellen.com Nino Strohecker | designstudio-s.com victims.at reverbnation.com/dienull Ruta Butkute | rutabutkute.com Tvrtko Buric | tvrtkoburic.com Participating curators Anique Weve and Floor Cornelisse | FamRuim, Rotterdam | fam-ruim.nl Coen de Jong | 38CC, Delft | 38cc.nl Iris Cornelis | gallery Iris Cornelis, Rotterdam | iriscornelis.com Ronald Boer | Satellietgroep, The Hague | satellietgroep.nl Kiki Petratou | gallery Joey Ramone, Rotterdam | joeyramone.nl Piet de Jonge | curator e.g. RAW CHINA EXPO, chief editor WHAT’S UP. Worked as senior curator modern art at Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen.

Réka Deuten-Makkai | art historian, The Hague Weronika Zielinska | Upominki, Rotterdam | upominki.nl Design Rolina Nell Photographs Marco Zwinkels | marcozwinkels.nl and by the artists themselves.

Front image: work in progress Lieke Snellen.

Text Thanks to the participating curators and Aline Baggio. Text corrections by Christopher Smith.

Working and presentation space at Kadmium Art Centre.

Living space at the property of Woonbron.

Funded with the support of Gemeente Delft and the European Commission. This publication reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

Printed by Oranje van Loon Drukkers. ©2013 foundation id11

id11 2013 delft, netherlands id11.nl