Martijn Hendriks
05 Apr - 03 May 2014
MARTIJN HENDRIKS
Credit Like Drain Follow
5 April - 3 May 2014
Much like the show’s title, the works in the exhibition reflect a fundamentally hybrid state of things in which boundaries between different networks and frames of reference continuously dissolve. Social networks contaminate financial ones, while the attention given to one situation depends on the fluctuations of another. Likes turn into followers, followers into credit assessments. Art objects may reference credit card designs while images of works online mingle with potential Facebook friends. One thing always mutates into another and everything is a source for something else. The fundamentally fluctuating and hybrid state of things we have come to call post-internet is here to stay, primarily as an obvious and pragmatic fact of everyday life.
As the works in the exhibition register these conditions, they do so in material terms that welcome this state of endless mutability and contamination. Sculptures feature cotton sweaters and t-shirts folded over plasma-cut aluminum sheets resembling oversized credit cards, carrying digital prints of letters outlining financial risks and opportunities. Organic looking, epoxy resin drenched garments bear the surface imprints of synthetic materials, as if memorizing the material traces of something previously subscribed to. A number of smaller wall sculptures, seemingly forwarded as the perfect objects of flawless circulation, turn out to be transparent like screens on closer inspection, encapsulating other objects. High end energy saving lamps of the daylight kind fit for gallery lighting and exhibition documentation remain disconnected from any power source yet appear to create a physical network between different works. Wiry display stands carrying strategically manipulated ergonomic supports evoke bodies in a state of uncertainty, their resources drained and perhaps no longer sure of their credit status, yet definitely still liking and following things.
Hybrid, porous, continually on the cusp of mutating into other forms, always already contaminated, the sculptures that populate Credit Like Drain Follow seem more than ready to get online and mingle with other works, perfectly fine with being among the search results of a random Google image search somewhere tonight.
Previous exhibitions of the work of Martijn Hendriks include the New Museum, New York City (2010), the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, North Adams (2011), Martin van Zomeren, Amsterdam (2011), Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam (2012), De Vleeshal, Middelburg (2012), WCW Gallery, Hamburg (2013) and Temporary Gallery, Cologne, (2014) among others. He currently lives and works in Amsterdam.
Credit Like Drain Follow
5 April - 3 May 2014
Much like the show’s title, the works in the exhibition reflect a fundamentally hybrid state of things in which boundaries between different networks and frames of reference continuously dissolve. Social networks contaminate financial ones, while the attention given to one situation depends on the fluctuations of another. Likes turn into followers, followers into credit assessments. Art objects may reference credit card designs while images of works online mingle with potential Facebook friends. One thing always mutates into another and everything is a source for something else. The fundamentally fluctuating and hybrid state of things we have come to call post-internet is here to stay, primarily as an obvious and pragmatic fact of everyday life.
As the works in the exhibition register these conditions, they do so in material terms that welcome this state of endless mutability and contamination. Sculptures feature cotton sweaters and t-shirts folded over plasma-cut aluminum sheets resembling oversized credit cards, carrying digital prints of letters outlining financial risks and opportunities. Organic looking, epoxy resin drenched garments bear the surface imprints of synthetic materials, as if memorizing the material traces of something previously subscribed to. A number of smaller wall sculptures, seemingly forwarded as the perfect objects of flawless circulation, turn out to be transparent like screens on closer inspection, encapsulating other objects. High end energy saving lamps of the daylight kind fit for gallery lighting and exhibition documentation remain disconnected from any power source yet appear to create a physical network between different works. Wiry display stands carrying strategically manipulated ergonomic supports evoke bodies in a state of uncertainty, their resources drained and perhaps no longer sure of their credit status, yet definitely still liking and following things.
Hybrid, porous, continually on the cusp of mutating into other forms, always already contaminated, the sculptures that populate Credit Like Drain Follow seem more than ready to get online and mingle with other works, perfectly fine with being among the search results of a random Google image search somewhere tonight.
Previous exhibitions of the work of Martijn Hendriks include the New Museum, New York City (2010), the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, North Adams (2011), Martin van Zomeren, Amsterdam (2011), Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam (2012), De Vleeshal, Middelburg (2012), WCW Gallery, Hamburg (2013) and Temporary Gallery, Cologne, (2014) among others. He currently lives and works in Amsterdam.