Beelden op het Vrijthof 2013

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Beelden op het Vrijthof bracht in haar derde editie 13 beeldende kunstorganisaties uit de Euregio Maas-Rhein bij elkaar.

Van 4 tot en met 8 september 2013 presenteerde Beelden op het Vrijthof de artistieke kaart van de Euregio. Zo wel tijdens het bezoek van de jury van de Europese Culturele Hoofdstad 2018 op 4 september als tijdens Het Parcours, de opening van het culturele jaar in Maastricht, op 8 september.

“Yes, and this is art!”

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De openbare ruimte wordt steeds verder geprivatiseerd. Terwijl advertenties, commerciële evenementen en allerlei veiligheidsmaatregelen zonder veel ophef worden aanvaard, roepen kunstuitingen in de openbare ruimte steeds weer weerstand op.

We waren benieuwd hoe onze collega's en collega-instellingen zich tot deze uitspraak positioneren. Hiervoor kozen de 13 participerende kunstorganisaties elk een kunstenaar uit die op het Vrijthof letterlijk en figuurlijk een beeld van hun instelling ging geven.

Deelnemende kunstenaars

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ACADEMIE BEELDENDE KUNSTEN MAASTRICHT

Joep Hinssen

Vaandels

Ten banners set up alongside each other in a row. Like a wall of banners, without recognizable symbols, logos or text. The banners represent nothing except themselves; they only serve their own unit. Joep Hinssen is fascinated with the aesthetics of banners and flags, like for example a row of flags in front of business premises. He finds the image much more interesting than what the flags stand for. In his previous work, he also dealt with attempting to detach objects from what they stood for (“this stands for that”) and to intensify the remaining shapes in relation to each other. That is the reason why he is interested in what is left over when you refuse to define the possible meaning of a work, while the experience of what is immediately visible does not get lost.

ACADEMIE ROYALE DES BEAUX ARTS LIEGE

Laurent Trezegnies

Étreintes Urbaines

My painting practice has led me to use prefabricated industrial materials, like colored tape or paper tape. I intervene with their expressive power. In other words, I divert their primary function to get a plastic dimension. My interventions are accompanied by a deep consideration of the exploited areas. I focus on the relationship between the adhesive and the integrated site. With my installations and ephemeral interventions, I propose new perceptual and new vanishing points. My work seeks to be close to the public to the extent that I am speaking about how to apprehend space. It is also for this reason that I prefer passageways, places of life.

B32 (MAASTRICHT)

Yuri Godoy

Suspicious Behaviour

Artist Yuri Godoy (Tel Aviv, 1978) creates obdurate videos and performances, often with a critical undertone. In recent years, he has moved his performances/actions to public areas, usually unannounced. At the request of B32, Godoy is carrying out a more extended version of the “Suspicious Behaviour” performance during ‘Beelden op het Vrijthof’. In 2012 he tested this concept during the ‘Documenta XIII in Kassel’. The organisation later dissociated itself from the performance. Godoy often reacts in his work to the ever-growing security measures. “Suspicious Behaviour” is a choreographic answer to recently developed algorithms for normal behaviour, as used in security cameras that register abnormal movements. Another provocation for this work is the method developed by the Israeli police to recognise a suspicious individual in a large crowd, a technique also used by the Dutch police. A number of actors instructed by Godoy will move about on the Vrijthof searching for the limitations of normal behaviour. If you see anything suspicious, chances are this is part of the choreography! B32 expects that the historical location of the Vrijthof, combined with the extremely current theme of Godoy’s performance will result in a unique experience. During ‘Beelden op het Vrijthof’ a documentary will be made of the performance. A compilation of a number of suspicious movements can be seen on Yuri’s website during the exhibition.

ÉCOLE SUPÉRIEURE DES ARTS SAINT LUC (LIEGE)

Michel Leonardi &
Dominique Lombardo

Flying Cabin

The Flying Cabin is a garden shelter moving in a public space and resting on a flying carpet. It is completely white to accentuate the contrast and the gap with its environment. The cabin received a graphic and pictorial treatment by graffiti artist Egon Leonardi, who customised it in order to individualise it, which is not often the case for such a utilitarian object. Then, with its new urban suit it introduces itself in the public space. Michel Leonardi and Dominique Lombardo imagine putting it in place on the Vrijthof in a poetic way. To them, the metaphor of the flying carpet seems very relevant and light, humorous and unpretentious, a wink that universes are often distant from each other.

GREYLIGHT PROJECTS (HOENSBROEK)

Bas Schevers & Michiel Huijben & Hedwig Houben

Love/Art

During ‘Beelden op het Vrijthof’ Bas Schevers, Hedwig Houben and Michiel Huijben performed covers of pop songs. They also played one number that they created especially for the performance on the Vrijthof. During the two days they played songs in English where the word ‘love’ has been replaced by ‘art’; they did so at irregular intervals for fifteen minutes at a time. They build a small stage on the Vrijthof for this performance, the backdrop being a banner attached to two trees, displaying the text of one of the songs from the repertoire. This made it clear that this was not just a performance by a small unknown pop group, but posed again the question that has already been answered in the theme of ‘BohV 2013’: In songs like “If there’s such a thing as art” (a cover of a song by 'The Magnetic Fields') they wondered out loud if such a thing as art exists, they arrive at the conclusion that if it really exists, then they want to have it.

HEDAH (MAASTRICHT)

Francois Salden

Bouwvak

The installations by Francois Salden are the result of his thoughts on light, space and perception. A game of and about our articles and products.

KUS (HEERLEN)

Maurice Meewisse

Kolen van Janssen

In Maurice Meewisse’s work it is all about hard physical labour and rough raw materials. He creates portraits of labourers and the collection and processing of raw materials is a very important step. He developed “Kolen van Janssen” for ‘Beelden op het Vrijthof’. This installation is an interpretation of the last phase of the mining industry; delivery to the consumer. The mining industry in South Limburg has disappeared and a large part of the potential industrial heritage was demolished in the nineteen-eighties. However, with this demolition nobody took into account how sensitive the closure of the mining industry would be. Traces can still be found, but most have disappeared. “Kolen van Janssen” (Coal from Janssen) is Meewisse’s reaction to the emotion surrounding the mining industry, presenting coal like a forgotten vegetable.

LUDWIG FORUM (AACHEN)

Bea Otto

open grid

Bea Otto’s works directly refer to the site. Her laconic and precise interventions question and transform space. The borders between interior and exterior are shifted, passages are blocked and openings created. Threshold situations, paradoxical and ambivalent moments, ruptures develop. Bareness expands. A temporary and fragile moment is inherent in the often provisional materials and objets trouvés, but is shifted and located through their precise positioning and processing. The works sway between genuine and artificial, strange and familiar, place and picture. They describe a transitory place that keeps moving.

MUSEUM HET DOMEIN (SITTARD)

Aggtelek

Performing the Scenography

In the work by Aggtelek (Gema Perales (1982) and Xandro Valles (1978), Barcelona) performances, installations and temporary sculptures overlap each other. The core of their work is the reflection on how the creative process is formed by the artist’s spatial and material intervention. Their work often consists of the playful construction of sculptures, demolishing them again and making them into a new work of art. After which the process starts again from the beginning. As a result of the rapid repetition and their creative finds, the work exudes great dynamism and vitality. They use simple materials, such as old cardboard boxes, tape and paint. They view the space in which they produce their sculptures as an important part of their work; in addition both artists are also part of the installation, as performing artists but also as independent individuals. They are, as it were, scriptwriters, artists, designers, directors and actors in their own play. The work of art is the video, but this is actually nothing more than a formal registration of a dynamic sculpture that was recorded in stop-motion.

NAK (AACHEN)

Martin G. Schmid

Opening Speech

Martin G. Schmid is a painter and performance artist. The basis for his text performances is self-composed poems, which he arranges into a coherent text. These texts are characterised by a great desire for linguistic experiment, which is by no means just about formality, but enters the deeper content. Schmid generally presents such texts using agitated speech. He operates with very heterogeneous voice modulations. By merging experimental voice and language elements in his lecture, his performances intensify significantly. Martin G. Schmid works in Zurich and Berlin. He exhibited and performed inter alia at the following international locations: Schaustelle Pinakothek der Moderne Munich, Stuttgart State Gallery, Centre d’Art Neuchâtel, Horst-Janssen-Museum Oldenburg, Chiang Mai Art Museum Thailand, Thalia Theater in Hamburg, Kunstverein Pforzheim, Neuer Kunstverein Wuppertal, Gesellschaft für aktuelle Kunst Bremen, Bezalel Gallery Tel Aviv, Galerie Daniel Buchholz Cologne, Stern Pissarro Gallery London, Galerie Aurel Scheibler Berlin, Gallery Contemporary Fine Arts Berlin.

SPACE COLLECTION (LIEGE)

Jonathan de Winter

Sans Titre

In a very protean manner, Jonathan De Winter composes raw material sculptures, large-scale sculptures, made of industrial and found objects mostly inhabited by music (which plays an important role in his approach), as well as paintings, questioning art history and its stake on contemporary culture. These are sites where musicians perform standing, sitting or lying down, and with these positions in his mind De Winter constructs these shelters and platforms. He calls them the beginning of a sequel or the end of a beginning; everything can grow. De Winter’s visual oeuvre is always related to his activities as a performer and musician. The choreography of the performance determines the form of the sculpture and can be changed during the performance and over time. His sculptures can be regarded as solidified sites that - like volcanoes - are warm on the inside and constantly changing.

VAN EYCK (MAASTRICHT)

Jan Hoeft

Ja, Yes, Jawohl, Oui!

Sphinx is an earthenware company that was founded in Maastricht by Petrus Regout in 1834. Hardcore or hardcore techno is a type of electronic dance music typified by the rhythmic use of distorted and industrial-like beats and samples. It is famous for producing sanitary ceramics like toilets and sinks. Because of the long tradition and the strong connection to the region, in 1959 the royal status was given. Although a variant from Detroit reached Amsterdam in the late 1980s, it were the producers from Rotterdam who evolved it into a harder variant which is known today. After surviving underground for a number of years, in 2002 the genre reappeared in the Netherlands. But in July 2009 it was announced that the production activities will leave Maastricht by 2010. Meanwhile the style became more mature, darker and industrial.

Z33 (HASSELT)

Atelier van Lieshout

Insect Farm

The modules by Atelier Van Lieshout are part of the New Tribal Labyrinth, a series of works by AVL concerning alternative and tribal societies based on three important pillars: agriculture, industry and rituals. The “Insect Farm” (or Entomophagus) fits in well with the first pillar and is part of a labyrinth of various farms, focussing on insects as a nutritious and costeffective food source with a limited ecological footprint. The modules were first shown at the exhibition “Mind the System, Find the Gap” at Z33 in 2012.

Georganiseerd door

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