Outdoor artworks at the Van Nelle grounds 2021
Art Rotterdam 2021 took full advantage of the summer season, with leading galleries and project spaces presenting a record number of impressive outdoor works of art on the factory grounds. Here you can read all about it:
Frank Taal | Bram Braam
100 years after Duchamp, artists continue to engage with reality and the redefinition of perspectives on current sculptural conceptions of time.
Our current state of social distance redefines our use of public space. To what extent can contemporary public space serve as an autonomous platform for interaction? Not only in spoken form, but also in textual or image-based compositions?
NEST | Brook Andrew
The bunyip is a mythical being in Wiradjuri (Australian) culture. This representation of bunyip is in the shape of a cartoon-like face, with eyes, saying ‘ngaay’, meaning ‘see’ in Wiradjuri language, and mouth saying ‘gir- nya- la-nha’, meaning ‘talk’. On the other side, the word ‘wiray’ means ‘no’. The artist is emphasizing that if we do not speak up for what we believe in there will be ‘wiray’ action.
NEST | Müge Yilmaz
A Garden of Coincidences is inspired by the oldest known temple complex in the world, and according to experts, the first cult site as well, where ritual gatherings took place to honour ancestors. Yilmaz’ installation has a similar form where each pillar represents a recent ancestor from different cultures and parts of the world. Yilmaz doesn’t refer in concrete terms to people from our collective memory, but points in an abstract manner to environmental activism, the fight for freedom, feminism and philosophies of First Nation communities relating to nature.
Trendbeheer | Marcha van den Hurk
Site-specific art installation by Marcha van den Hurk. Waving flags are hanging out of the windows of the Van Nelle Factory with texts from inmates from the penitentiary De Schie. The flags include quotes, slogans, wishes and messages to loved ones. When the wind blows, it is as if the flags wave at the inmates in the penitentiary across the water.
Wave has been supported by CBK Rotterdam (Centre for Visual Arts Rotterdam), Rotterdam Art Week/Rotterdam Festivals and Droom en Daad Foundation.
(i.s.m. gedetineerden van PI De Schie | in collaboration with detainees of PI De Schie)
Courtesy trendbeheer.com / artagentorange.com / marchavandenhurk.com
Mondriaan Fonds | Lucas Sloot
Lucas Sloot (1988) is concerned with the connections between himself and the things that surround him. His works ask us to re-examine the potential and limitations of things. Follow the Line // Crossing the Field (2020) comprises two wooden copies of an electricity pylon, an object that is found in every landscape but which we hardly notice anymore. One of the two pylons is on the lawn in front of the Van Nelle Factory, the other is inside in one of the exhibition spaces of Prospects.
Mondriaan Fonds | Olle Stjerne
Olle Stjerne (1984) has placed a number of temporary structures in the grounds of the Van Nelle Factory. His works attempt to subvert how the viewer experiences materials. The relationship to architecture is also a recurring theme: ‘I introduce the human size right next to monumental architecture’, says the artist. ‘I am inspired by how ideas shift over time and how the past can resonate in the present.’
Mondriaan Fonds | Rowan van As
Rowan van As (1991) spent several months building a copy of the iconic New York taxi. For him, constructing the car was a repetitive experience, accompanied by the almost continuous soundtrack of an old album by Gil Scott-Heron and Brian Jackson. While working on the sculpture, he imagined driving his own taxi through New York and observing the social issues that Scott-Heron sings about, which are still relevant today. During Art Rotterdam, Van As’s taxi will be parked outside the Van Nelle Factory and the artist will create an atmosphere around the vehicle that matches the themes that occupied him during its construction.
Mondriaan Fonds | Lin Gerritse
Lin Gerritse (1988) is fascinated by the human body, especially his own. His works include installations with materials that in no way resemble the body, but which function as ‘ecosystems in miniature, in which every movement influences the rest, and each individual object waits for the moment of its action’. This also applies to his sound installation of rocks being moved along and between conveyor belts, in which the sounds of falling, sliding and breaking form an endless and hypnotic musical composition. The debris derives from the Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten Antwerpen.
Courtesy: Part of the exhibition Prospects – Mondriaan Fonds toont talent.
Mondriaan Fonds | Lin Gerritse
Lin Gerritse (1988) is fascinated by the human body, especially his own. His works include installations with materials that in no way resemble the body, but which function as ‘ecosystems in miniature, in which every movement influences the rest, and each individual object waits for the moment of its action’. This also applies to his sound installation of rocks being moved along and between conveyor belts, in which the sounds of falling, sliding and breaking form an endless and hypnotic musical composition. The debris derives from the Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten Antwerpen.
Murals Inc. | Niels Shoe Meulman
My intention is to create a memorial piece for the millions of culled/killed mink through my repetitive un-stroke style. The work will consist of 100 x 20 strokes. One stroke stands for ten thousand coronas killed minks.
Part of project ‘Are we safe now?’
Murals Inc. | Willehad Eilers
“I intend to visualize the confusion, fear, anger, hope, opportunism, corrupcy and companionship that i experienced throughout the past year and a half of pandemic”.
Part of project ‘Are we safe now?’
Murals Inc. | Anan Striker
'Armed with the J-card and a ravers fan, walking on letters of value with a running nose, desiring to the 'Return of the Real'. For real.'
(Location: Schuttevaerweg, aan de straat, bij entree Van Nellefabriek)
Part of '(real) humans' bij Murals Inc. (office), Piekstraat 31
Courtesy the artists and Murals Inc., Rotterdam
Creative Chef Studio | Jasper Udink ten Cate
This sculpture is an architectonic model from the Future Food City. A utopian city created by artist Jasper Udink ten Cate. In this city humankind solved all of the problems we are facing today by redefining the food system and our western economy. Currently the city is being built on a digital platform and has welcomed its first citizens all-ready. With the sculpture the artist wants to create a starting-point for a collective story towards a better future.
KochxBos Gallery | Sarah Maple
This installation depicts a billboard reading ‘The World As We Know It’ discharged in a skip. Initially made as a response to the UK’s departure from the EU, now adapted and changed as the political climate does. And now it's urgent again with the global pandemic, this piece could not be more relevant. Much like the pandemic, it asks the viewer to discard what they know, reimagine the future and rethink individualism. The towering scale allows the viewer to see themselves as a smaller part in a larger narrative.
The work has previously been shown at Skip Gallery, London and has now been brought to the Netherlands by KochxBos Gallery for Art Rotterdam, also as an announcement for the new exhibition of Sarah Maple in the gallery, during the Opening of the gallery season in early September.
KersGallery | David Bade
The sculpture is a basis for fight or flight. A fight-orflight response, or flight-or-fight response, it is a defense mechanism that occurs in humans and animals when there is an imminent threat of danger. You could also interpret it as fighting against yourself or against prejudice. Bade always fights positively.
