Job Koelewijn
18 Mar - 13 May 2006
JOB KOELEWIJN
"Continuing Performance "
We are proud to present you, our greatly respected public, with Job Koelewijn's ‘Continuing Performance’. A remarkable spectacle lies in store for you: come and be perplexed by the tricks played with time, which passes at variable speed. Let fear take hold of you as you catch sight of eternity or perhaps even glimpse what lies beyond time altogether. Be moved at the visits back in time, which will surreptitiously tell you more about both present and future. Above all, be cautious with Koelewijn's time; it will not always allow you to continue on your way.
In the beginning was the word, the written word is unto eternity. A bookcase in the form of a lemniscate (the mathematical sign for infinity), full of books, words, shows the cycle of art. The way in which artworks endure, sometimes concealed, sometimes at eye level, close enough to touch, then forgotten for years, pushed away behind other books. The eternal performance of art. The public constantly changes in age and era. The words remain the same, and yet what is read changes from one age to the next.
In art - classical art - the eternal and the ephemeral come together in harmony (Baudelaire). Art is like mankind itself, each work is an immortal soul in a mortal, relative body - a dialogue with history and the contemporary. A traditional landscape trapped in the claustrophobic space of infinity, like the narrow and eternal world of art history. An everyday polder landscape that we have seen so often, but now truly visible for the first time, in a different space and a different time.
Four monumental works will be exhibited in Continuing Performance; structural alterations had to be made to the gallery to accommodate them. In the centre is a large bookcase in the shape of a lemniscate (Untitled, 2006). A wooden booth has been set up containing an unending polder landscape (Jump, 2005). An open window has been cut out of the gallery's rear wall, the frame of which revolves like a clock, but according to its own changing rhythm (Untitled, 2006). An allusion to Koelewijn's 1996 show, in which he removed the gallery's back wall altogether? Entering the space, one is immediately confronted with time: a glass display case containing a clock shop (Untitled, 2003) hangs down in front of the entrance, moving to and fro like a pendulum.
Together, the monumental works make up a harmonious whole, a metaphor for the structure that man has attempted to impose on time. The works are time within time, movement in space. This extreme visualisation of human time creates an awareness of the impossibility of conceptualising real time. Time is an illusion, a way of seeing that we cannot do without. We are confronted with the insignificance of human beings, who balance between the awareness of life in invented structures and the impossibility of pure freedom. Meanwhile, we see eternal recurrence and the eternal change of things. Job Koelewijn shows us that we are the puppets in the ‘Continuing Performance’ of time.
[Laura van Grinsven]
© Job Koelewijn
"Continuing Performance "
We are proud to present you, our greatly respected public, with Job Koelewijn's ‘Continuing Performance’. A remarkable spectacle lies in store for you: come and be perplexed by the tricks played with time, which passes at variable speed. Let fear take hold of you as you catch sight of eternity or perhaps even glimpse what lies beyond time altogether. Be moved at the visits back in time, which will surreptitiously tell you more about both present and future. Above all, be cautious with Koelewijn's time; it will not always allow you to continue on your way.
In the beginning was the word, the written word is unto eternity. A bookcase in the form of a lemniscate (the mathematical sign for infinity), full of books, words, shows the cycle of art. The way in which artworks endure, sometimes concealed, sometimes at eye level, close enough to touch, then forgotten for years, pushed away behind other books. The eternal performance of art. The public constantly changes in age and era. The words remain the same, and yet what is read changes from one age to the next.
In art - classical art - the eternal and the ephemeral come together in harmony (Baudelaire). Art is like mankind itself, each work is an immortal soul in a mortal, relative body - a dialogue with history and the contemporary. A traditional landscape trapped in the claustrophobic space of infinity, like the narrow and eternal world of art history. An everyday polder landscape that we have seen so often, but now truly visible for the first time, in a different space and a different time.
Four monumental works will be exhibited in Continuing Performance; structural alterations had to be made to the gallery to accommodate them. In the centre is a large bookcase in the shape of a lemniscate (Untitled, 2006). A wooden booth has been set up containing an unending polder landscape (Jump, 2005). An open window has been cut out of the gallery's rear wall, the frame of which revolves like a clock, but according to its own changing rhythm (Untitled, 2006). An allusion to Koelewijn's 1996 show, in which he removed the gallery's back wall altogether? Entering the space, one is immediately confronted with time: a glass display case containing a clock shop (Untitled, 2003) hangs down in front of the entrance, moving to and fro like a pendulum.
Together, the monumental works make up a harmonious whole, a metaphor for the structure that man has attempted to impose on time. The works are time within time, movement in space. This extreme visualisation of human time creates an awareness of the impossibility of conceptualising real time. Time is an illusion, a way of seeing that we cannot do without. We are confronted with the insignificance of human beings, who balance between the awareness of life in invented structures and the impossibility of pure freedom. Meanwhile, we see eternal recurrence and the eternal change of things. Job Koelewijn shows us that we are the puppets in the ‘Continuing Performance’ of time.
[Laura van Grinsven]
© Job Koelewijn