maandag 16 mei 2011

ABOUT HOW ORDINARY OBJECTS BECOME AN EXTRAORDINARY PIECES, AND HOW SPECIAL EVENTS BECOME A SUNDAY AFTERNOONS ROUTINE.

I guess it might be strange to realize that Guestroom project just had his very last opening.

Past Sunday afternoon Ghislain Amar had the honor to exhibit his work as the closing artist of a half-year project that took place in our house. As for the limited space, as well the message that has always been spread through a grapevine – the event was visited by a great numbers of visitors.





Amar showed a spatial installation that consisted of plaster sculpture, concrete sculpture, analogue photographs, slide projection, sound and a book. Presented objects made us wonder about those moments when we let our thoughts simply to flow. While sitting  on the pavement outside in front of the house, we give up the time to just be. And without trying to catch it, we accidently get absorbed by those objects/happenings that normally we do not pay much attention to.  
Exactly ‘some representations‘,  as the artist put it, of such carefree forgetfulness were viewed in the Guestroom space.

This installation was an invitation, a gesture made towards the viewer, a motivation to discover something new, to end up in a place you never planned to visit, and finally to allow yourself to reflect on such discovery. If art does not exist without its receiver, if an exhibition does not happens when there is no public, if according to Ghislain Amar: a gallery space is able to produce a (new) work, then what she/he is confronted with, has definitely a potential to be found (again), to be experienced truthfully as it is there. Standing in the corner not pretending to be something, which it is not, just a simple plastic bag…



installation view / slide projection of a google earth image 


 detail / photo diptych

 installation view / 93,4 FM


 installation view / concrete flight of steps



detail / plaster sculptures

/////




When leaving the space some people were telling me: see you next time… :) My good friend Ania admitted, that for her the Sunday visits at our place where something what she was looking very much to, at the same time they marked their own place in her weekly agenda. She even compared them with The Thursday Dinners…[1]













P.S. It was lovely, again. To all that came - a great thank you!!

_________________
[1] The Thursday Dinners were meetings of artists, intellectuals, and statesmen held by the last King of Poland, Stanislaus Augustus Poniatowski in the era of Enlightenment in Poland.
The dinners were held first in the Royal Castle in Warsaw and later in the Water Palace between 1770 and 1784. During the dinners, which typically lasted three hours and resembled French salons, the King dined with his guests and discussed literature, art and politics.

woensdag 4 mei 2011

DAYS OF WAVERING/SOME REPRESENTATIONS



On Sunday the 8th of May at 4 PM Guestroom temporary project space at Aelbrechtskade 128, Rotterdam, will open its door to the public for the last time. Please feel welcome to join for this very special event.
_____________________________________________________________________________


DAYS OF WAVERING/SOME REPRESENTATIONS

The exhibition is made out of forms that have been put together during the two weeks spent at the Guestroom which is located in Delfshaven, Rotterdam, in an area of the neighborhood where i don't usually go to. 
I have been thinking a lot about the idea of spending time floating around as of walking in the neighborhood, eating in snack bars, looking at the waiters working, looking at the people passing by the window, sitting on the stoop and smelling the tires from the garage next door, as well as going to the photo lab to process some films, or to the hardware store to find some plaster, concrete and other confusing words and materials. 
I have been thinking about the conditions needed for exploration to appear and how representation enters that process and shape it. I would ideally like the photographs, sculptures and objects I show, to be encountered like a punctured balloon found on the rooftop of an abandoned school.
---
wave/wavering/ocean/oceanic
a hundred and twenty eight/128
the boomboxes and the hot concrete      
I think if life exists/it's probably like this
---
Big thanks to Weronika Zielinska, Anna Maria Łuczak, Mehdi Belhaj Kacem and Jeffrey Lewis

Ghislain.