Something Light

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

Daniel Arsham/ Hans Op de Beeck

Amsterdam

Working in diverse media Miami-bred artist, Daniel Arsham (1980, Cleveland Ohio) synthesises a future civilisation, symbolised by its architecture, where a cold, entropic beauty empowers nature over culture, in a manner akin to J.G. Ballard’s crystalline worlds, but where people’s lives can only be guessed at or wondered about from afar.

In the series of work especially created for this exposition, this other-worldy aesthetic of nature’s reassertion over culture, is clearly evident. A series of gouaches detail rectilinear posts emerging like ghosts from leafy overgrowths. Sculptures form negative incisions, eating in as erosions into objects and the gallery walls.

Daniel Arsham is represented by Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin Miami/ Paris. He has taken part in a number of well-received group and solo-expositions in the States and in Europe. His work has been included in a range of high-profile collections such as that of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami and the LVMH Collection. He has collaborated with visionaries such as Merce Cunningham and Hedi Slimane.

*Simultaneously to this show, Hans Op de Beeck (Turnhout BE, 1969) will exclusively present a series of 5 limited edition prints, entitled ‘Possible Panoramas’.*
This presentation has been conceived in reference to the artist’s largest project to date, the sculptural panoramic installation ‘Location (6)’, which opens at Holland Festival in Amsterdam on June the 1st, 2008.

After more than a year of preparation, the monumental installation ‘Location (6)’ will have its premier on May the 31st at Holland Festival in the Westergasfabriek, Amsterdam. Just as with its predecessor ‘Location (5)’, this latest piece will showcase an architectural environment with view of a seemingly endless landscape. 'Location (6)' leads the viewer through a long corridor to a quiet, cylinder-shaped space where a circular formed bench has been placed, inviting you to take a seat. From this position the viewer is surrounded by a sculptural interpretation of a vast snowy landscape. Mist, white light, snow and bare white trees fuse together to create a rarefied, serene and almost immaterial image.

Especially for this grand event, Hans Op de Beeck has created a limited edition series of 5 large-scale panoramic prints. 'Possible Panoramas' are imaginary landscapes created in aquarelle and ink that embody, just as the installation 'Location (6)' to which they refer, something simultaneously still and suggestive. These exclusive prints will come in an exquisite, hand-made presentation folder.

‘Location (6)’ will be open to the public every day between the hours of 12 noon and 11 pm from the 1st to the 21st of June at the Gashouder of the Westergasfabriek in Amsterdam. After this the installation will travel onto the Singapore Biennale which will be held from the 11th of September to the 16th of November, 2008.

_Please feel free to e-mail Toby Robinson (toby@ronmandos.nl) or Frederike van Osnabrugge (frederike@ronmandos.nl) or call +31 (0)20 320 70 36 should you have any questions._

ARTWORKS

Daniel Arsham/ Hans Op de Beeck
Daniel Arsham/ Hans Op de Beeck
Daniel Arsham/ Hans Op de Beeck
Daniel Arsham/ Hans Op de Beeck
Daniel Arsham/ Hans Op de Beeck
Daniel Arsham/ Hans Op de Beeck
Daniel Arsham/ Hans Op de Beeck
Daniel Arsham/ Hans Op de Beeck

ABOUT Daniel Arsham

New York based artist Daniel Arsham work explores the fields of fine art, architecture, performance, design and film. Raised in Miami, Arsham attended the Cooper Union in New York City where he received the Gelman Trust Fellowship Award in 2003.

Soon thereafter Arsham toured worldwide with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company as the company’s stage designer. The experience lead to an ongoing collaborative practice which continues as Arsham works with world renowned artists, musicians, designers, and brands.

Arsham’s uchronic aesthetics revolves around his concept of fictional archaeology. Working in sculpture, architecture, drawing and film, he creates and crystallizes ambiguous in-between spaces or situations, and further stages what he refers to as future relics of the present. Always iconic, most of the objects that he turns into stone refer to the late 20th century or millennial era, when technological obsolescence unprecedentedly accelerated along with the digital dematerialization of our world. While the present, the future and the past poetically collide in his haunted yet playful visions between romanticism and pop art, Daniel Arsham also experiments with the timelessness of certain symbols and gestures across cultures.

In 2008, Arsham co-founded Snarkitecture with architect Alex Mustonen. Snarkitecture is a collaborative design practice established to investigate the boundaries between the disciplines of art and architecture. Snarkitecture focuses on the reinterpretation of everyday materials, structures and programs to new and imaginative effect. The studio's work includes installations, architectural environments and objects for a diverse range of clients such as Beats by Dre, Calvin Klein, COS, Design Miami, Gufram, Kith, New Museum, and Valextra.

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ABOUT Hans Op de Beeck

Hans Op de Beeck (Be) produces large installations, sculptures, films, drawings, paintings, photographs and texts. His work is a reflection on our complex society and the universal questions of meaning and mortality that resonate within it.

He regards man as a being who stages the world around him in a tragi-comic way. Above all, Op de Beeck is keen to stimulate the viewers’ senses, and invite them to really experience the image. He seeks to create a form of visual fiction that delivers a moment of wonder, silence and introspection.

Hans Op de Beeck was born in Turnhout in 1969. He lives and works in Brussels and Gooik, Belgium. Op de Beeck has shown his work extensively in solo and group exhibitions around the world.

He has had substantial institutional solo shows at the GEM Museum of Contemporary Art of The Hague, The Hague, NL (2004); MUHKA Museum of Contemporary Art, Antwerp, B (2006); Centraal Museum, Utrecht, NL (2007); the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC, US (2010); Kunstmuseum Thun, CH (2010); Centro de Arte Caja de Burgos, Burgos, ES (2010); Butler Gallery, Kilkenny, IRL (2012); Kunstverein Hannover, D (2012); Tampa Museum of Art, Tampa, USA (2013); the Harn Museum of Art, Gainesville, FL, USA (2013); FRAC Paca, Marseille, F (2013); MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, Boston MA, US (2014); MOCA Cleveland, OH, US (2014); Sammlung Goetz, Munich, D (2014); Screen Space, Melbourne, AU (2015); Espace 104, Paris, FR (2016); Art Unlimited, Basel, CH (2016); Kunstraum Dornbirn, Dornbirn, AU (2017); Museum Morsbroich, Leverkusen, DE (2017); Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Wolfsburg, DE (2017); Fondazione Museo Pino Pascali, Polignano a Mare, IT (2017); ...

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