The exhibition at the Witte de With Center for Contemporary Arts examines various artistic practices in Rotterdam associated with craft and industrial production. It is supposed to reveal the collapse of the still-ongoing dichotomy between practitioners and intellectuals, and presents a series of works that reject this binary concept.
Among the works, several recurring areas can be identified: first, the fascination with the role of the amateur, engaged in absurdly time-consuming activities that border on meditation; second, the analysis of the process of creation and its transformation into a new moment of creation.
The examination of sculpture and applied arts is a battle between functionalism and formalism. It shows the flowering of decoration and the revaluation of beauty, the avoidance of thinking and the emphasis on intuitive knowledge. Many works hold humor or irony, which vent the pious seriousness that accompanies the discussion of the trade.
Artists: Wilfrid Almendra, Eva Berendes, Alexandre da Cunha, Julia Dault, Dewar & Gicquel, Ane Hjort Guttu, Hedwig Houben, Teppei Kaneuji, Edgar Leciejewski, Rita McBride, William J. O'Brien, Eva Rothschild, Hans Schabus, Koki Tanaka.
Supported by:
Goethe-Institut Niederlande, OCA, CulturesFrance, Institut Français des Pays-Bas (Maison Descartes), Austrian Embassy in The Hague.
23 January - 1 May 2011
Witte de With, Center of Contemporary Arts, Witte de Withstraat 50, 3012 BR Rotterdam, NL
