GLOBAL ART AFFAIRS FOUNDATION
By Karlyn De Jongh and Sarah Gold
Through the above link, you can download the PDF of this publication
We, Karlyn De Jongh and Sarah
Gold, two curators from the Netherlands, have created the non-profit
organization GlobalArtAffairs Foundation. We organize many different
projects in the world of contemporary art. Our aim is to heighten the
awareness about the more philosophical themes in contemporary art, in
particular Time – Space and Existence. We try to make these concepts
more accessible to a wider international audience, hoping to heighten
the awareness and importance of thoughts about Time - Space and
Existence in each person’s life. In order to do this, we organize
symposia, exhibitions and publish books around these themes, always in
close cooperation with the artists involved. We offer artists a platform
to present their work; this platform is called “PERSONAL STRUCTURES”.
PERSONAL
STRUCTURES was initiated in 2002 by the Dutch artist Rene Rietmeyer,
for whom the concepts Time – Space and Existence are essential for his
work, and as he says: ”they are the largest concepts for mankind in
general, not only in art.” Rietmeyer’s works, which he calls “Boxes”,
are personal and address his existence within time and space. The Boxes
refer to people, cities, and regions, but do not simply represent the
visual appearance of the subjects. Rather they create a certain
atmosphere: they convey the artist’s emotional relationship to the
subject through form, color, texture, composition, and choice of
materials. The Boxes ‘contain’ Rietmeyer’s thoughts and express the
experience of a specific region or person, he met at a certain place and
time. Rietmeyer expresses himself with abstract means; the installation
“NAPLES 2010”, for example, comprises a lively statement with a ‘dirty’
yellow-red-colored painted surface. The objects reflect Rietmeyer’s
thoughts on Naples, during May 2010 when we were there with him one week
for Hermann Nitsch’s 130th Aktion. The Boxes show Naples, its subject
and, simultaneously, admit something about him, regardless of whether
the result is aesthetically pleasing or not. As Rietmeyer says:
“Ultimately, my work is nothing other than the proof of my existence.”
Rene
Rietmeyer noticed that even in the most distant corners of the world,
there are artists working with Time - Space and Existence, thereby
expressing themselves in a very personal way. This observation led to
the idea of bringing several of these artists together in publications,
exhibitions and symposia. He wanted to make these concepts more ‘en
vogue’, and realize a change in the world of contemporary art. Believing
so much in this idea, Rietmeyer setup and donated all his work to our
Foundation, allowing us to organize our events with the money we earn
from the sales.
PERSONAL STRUCTURES began with 16 young artists
from all over the world, mainly working with similar ‘minimalist’
characteristics. Rietmeyer regarded these individual, artistic
expressions of each artist as personal statements and came up with the
overall title PERSONAL STRUCTURES. Even though Rietmeyer’s work has
these ‘minimalist’ characteristics, his Boxes are personal and go beyond
the thoughts of the Minimalist movement of artists such as Donald Judd,
who said their work is objective. Continuing from the 1966 Minimal Art
exhibition “Primary Structures”, PERSONAL STRUCTURES refers to the
return of the personal and the subjective in art and became an open
forum for artists working with the themes of Time – Space and Existence,
each in their own, personal way.
Over the years, PERSONAL
STRUCTURES developed. In 2005, I, Sarah, came to the project and started
together with Rene Rietmeyer a cycle of symposia in which artists would
speak about their work. We came up with the idea of organizing a
symposium about Time in Amsterdam, Space in New York and Existence in
Tokyo. Starting to organize this first symposium in Amsterdam in 2007,
we needed assistance. This is when, I, Karlyn joined the team. From then
on, we worked together: organizing our symposia and doing interviews.
Our project started growing. More artists participated: Joseph Kosuth,
Lawrence Weiner, Roman Opalka, Lee Ufan and Dan Graham. And we started
to focus less and less on the visual aspects of the work, leaving the
‘minimalist’ characteristics for what they were – opening ourselves up
for artists, such as Hermann Nitsch and Antony Gormley. In 2009, all
symposium texts and interviews were published with DuMont in a beautiful
red book, which – in short – became the start of where we are today:
the 2011 Venice Biennale.
VENICE BIENNALE EXHIBITION
Since 4
June 2011, our exhibition PERSONAL STRUCTURES at Palazzo Bembo in
Venice, is open to the public. It is part of the 54th Venice Biennale
and presents 28 artists from 5 continents, representing 12 countries.
Through the contacts we gained over the past years, we were able to
bring together an extraordinary combination of established artists and
others whose oeuvre is less known – showing Joseph Kosuth next to Judy
Millar and Marina Abramović and Lawrence Weiner next to Toshikatsu Endo.
What they have in common, of course, is a dedication to the concepts
Time - Space and Existence.
Venice’s prestigious Palazzo Bembo,
by Rialto Bridge on Canal Grande, was for us the perfect building. The
24 spaces, allowed us to give most of the artists a space of their own.
And we gave them the freedom to do with that space what they wanted,
interfering as little as possible. It was a challenge for them: creating
a statement for the Venice Biennale, being presented in such good
company. That is why, each artist in the exhibition presents recent
artworks, either site-specific, especially made for this exhibition, or
coming directly from the artist’s studio. Their strong statements give
each of the rooms a very specific atmosphere.
Because the
participating artists have their roots in diverse cultures and have very
different ages, the concepts Time - Space and Existence are highlighted
not only in very personal ways but from unusual points of view, too. In
addition, the exhibition features a broad variety of artistic media,
such as: videos, sculptures, paintings, photos, installations with
light, wallpaper and performance. This means that you can see a light
installation from the 84-year-old François Morellet from France as well
as a performance from the 30-year-old Xing Xin from China. Conform the
thoughts of PERSONAL STRUCTURES, this exhibition offers you the
possibility to create a more conscious relation with your surroundings
and tries to increase your awareness of your own personal Existence
within a specific Space and Time.
ART PROJECTS AND EDITIONS
Besides
the group exhibitions and symposia, we organize projects centralizing
one single artist. These “Personal Structures Art Projects” are tailored
to fit the artist’s thoughts and to emphasize his work. It became a
series of projects, which are documented as special edition artists'
books. So far, we published four of those projects, with Lawrence
Weiner, Hermann Nitsch, Roman Opalka and On Kawara. The projects allow
us to spend quite a lot of time together with the artist, intensifying
the relationship and our knowledge about his work. For example, in our
first Art Project, we stayed 24 hours together with Weiner on his
houseboat in the harbor of Amsterdam, Netherlands. Everything that
happened, was documented, turning it into an ‘absurdly long’ theater
play. Another project was with Hermann Nitsch, where we spent seven days
together with Nitsch and participated in his 130th Aktion in the Museo
Hermann Nitsch in Naples, in May 2010. Each day, separate from each
other, we both wrote very honestly and openly about our experiences. You
have been able to read about our project with Nitsch in the previous
issue of this magazine, where we published a part of our experience
being naked on the cross during Nitsch’s Aktion.
This
experience, being part of Nitsch’s artwork, experiencing ‘life’ so
intensely with all our senses and writing about our feelings, led to the
idea of doing more than ‘just’ the written documentation of this event.
We created an Art Edition of 50 copies, containing each 12 photos of
the different stages in Nitsch’s Aktion together with both our texts in
which we tell about how we experienced the event. A similar edition we
are now making with Arnulf Rainer, who drew over photos of us and wrote a
story about how this all came into being.
Our project PERSONAL
STRUCTURES is an ongoing project, expanding with everything we do. We
are already looking forward to the projects that are scheduled after our
current Venice Biennale exhibition: symposia in South Africa and
Australia and our new book “PERSONAL STRUCTURES: TIME SPACE EXISTENCE,
number 2”. We are now 33 and 30 years old, planning to continue this
project for many years to come and hoping that one day we will be able
to give the project further to other young people who will continue to
organize events around the concepts Time – Space and Existence and live a
beautiful and interesting life in the world of contemporary art.
Our
current exhibition PERSONAL STRUCTURES is open every day, until 27
November 2011. It is held at Palazzo Bembo, close to Rialto Bridge on
Canal Grande. An exhibition catalogue as well as our 448-page book about
our project, PERSONAL STRUCTURES (DuMont 2009), containing the thoughts
of several of the exhibiting artists, will be available.
For more information, you can always look on our websites:
www.globalartaffairs.org
www.personalstructures.org
www.palazzobembo.org
www.venice-exhibitions.org
www.ps-artproject.org
