Guido van der Werve
20 Jan - 12 Feb 2012
GUIDO VAN DER WERVE
Emotional Poverty
20 January - 12 February 2012
ARTISTS TALK
Guido van der Werve and Matt Mullican - "The Art of Endurance" (in Englisch)
2nd February 2012, 7 pm
Künstlerhaus Bethanien GmbH,
In the exhibition spaces - Kottbusser Str. 10,
10999 Berlin
Two artist personalities who deal in different, performance-oriented ways with the topics of melancholy, life, death, the romanticized figure of the creative artist, and the controllable and the uncontrollable meet in Matt Mullican and Guido van der Werve. Perception, self-questioning and insight are the artistic means they employ, adopting “uncharacteristic” methods such as hypnosis or sport.
In conversation with journalist and cultural manager Sabine Kienzer, light will be shed on Mullican’s understanding of the world and his investigations into the relations between reality and our perception of it; also on van der Werve’s self-questioning, in the sense of an enduring interconnection with the world and with ourselves. Afterwards, both artists will be available for a panel discussion with the audience.
Guido van der Werve’s creative work consists of films and videos of performances and actions, for which the artist – who has also completed musical training – often composes special soundtracks. His works deal with a wide range of cultural topics, although the artist always critically and sensitively questions their function as access to an experience of the world. His films are characterised by the artist’s own activities as a performer; he always appears as a protagonist in his works, often exposing himself to tremendous physical hardships and dangers, as in the video film „Number 8: Everything is going to be alright“, for example, in which van der Werve walks across frozen Finnish seas only a few metres in front of a huge icebreaker, or when he completes a 28-mile marathon from a New York gallery to the grave of composer Rachmaninov in order to lay a bouquet of camomile blossoms on it. These are filmic compositions that include lyrical and musical elements and deeply move the viewer with their wonderful, but equally melancholy images.
The exhibition „Emotional Poverty“ shows a selection of the artist’s recent works, including the documentation of van der Werve’s climb up Aconcagua, or „Effugio C, You’re always just half a day a way“, a 12-hour HD-video showing how the artist - wearing running gear - circled his house in the Finnish town of Hassi for twelve hours without interruption (2011). Guido van der Werve is a grantee of the Mondriaan Fonds (formerly Fonds voor beeldende kunsten, vormgeving en bouwkunst), Amsterdam in the context of our International Studio Programme.
With the kind support of the Dutch Embassy, Berlin.
http://www.roofvogel.org
Emotional Poverty
20 January - 12 February 2012
ARTISTS TALK
Guido van der Werve and Matt Mullican - "The Art of Endurance" (in Englisch)
2nd February 2012, 7 pm
Künstlerhaus Bethanien GmbH,
In the exhibition spaces - Kottbusser Str. 10,
10999 Berlin
Two artist personalities who deal in different, performance-oriented ways with the topics of melancholy, life, death, the romanticized figure of the creative artist, and the controllable and the uncontrollable meet in Matt Mullican and Guido van der Werve. Perception, self-questioning and insight are the artistic means they employ, adopting “uncharacteristic” methods such as hypnosis or sport.
In conversation with journalist and cultural manager Sabine Kienzer, light will be shed on Mullican’s understanding of the world and his investigations into the relations between reality and our perception of it; also on van der Werve’s self-questioning, in the sense of an enduring interconnection with the world and with ourselves. Afterwards, both artists will be available for a panel discussion with the audience.
Guido van der Werve’s creative work consists of films and videos of performances and actions, for which the artist – who has also completed musical training – often composes special soundtracks. His works deal with a wide range of cultural topics, although the artist always critically and sensitively questions their function as access to an experience of the world. His films are characterised by the artist’s own activities as a performer; he always appears as a protagonist in his works, often exposing himself to tremendous physical hardships and dangers, as in the video film „Number 8: Everything is going to be alright“, for example, in which van der Werve walks across frozen Finnish seas only a few metres in front of a huge icebreaker, or when he completes a 28-mile marathon from a New York gallery to the grave of composer Rachmaninov in order to lay a bouquet of camomile blossoms on it. These are filmic compositions that include lyrical and musical elements and deeply move the viewer with their wonderful, but equally melancholy images.
The exhibition „Emotional Poverty“ shows a selection of the artist’s recent works, including the documentation of van der Werve’s climb up Aconcagua, or „Effugio C, You’re always just half a day a way“, a 12-hour HD-video showing how the artist - wearing running gear - circled his house in the Finnish town of Hassi for twelve hours without interruption (2011). Guido van der Werve is a grantee of the Mondriaan Fonds (formerly Fonds voor beeldende kunsten, vormgeving en bouwkunst), Amsterdam in the context of our International Studio Programme.
With the kind support of the Dutch Embassy, Berlin.
http://www.roofvogel.org