SASKIA NOOR VAN IMHOFF. #+28.00

SASKIA NOOR VAN IMHOFF. #+28.00¹
21.04.2017 - 17.06.2017

¹ a black line, tasting of metal, cold to the touch
the line breaks off into sideways
sidetracks, side-thoughts
a detour, a discourse
appearance: transparent solid
slightly yellow (correspond to the standard glass color piece of crodino)

Galerie Fons Welters proudly invites you to #+28.00, Saskia Noor van Imhoff’s second solo show in the gallery. Through layered installations, Van Imhoff expresses her fascination with the systems of exhibiting, archiving and preserving art and artifacts. The orderings which institutions apply to their collection, the context that determines the value and truth of an object and the architecture as part of this narrative are employed by Van Imhoff in her own associative reading of new connections between art and the ordinary. Her installations are composed of a rich range of original and found objects, her own and others' artworks, texts, diagrams, an archive of online found images and documentation of previous exhibitions. The specific ways of arranging the readymade and self-made object form new constellations in a system on itself. The numerical title that each of her exhibitions carries, refers directly to these systems. As such, the seriality of this distinctive system is a way of building on, a hitch, and a new start again and again.

In her previous installations Van Imhoff departed from the conditions of the context in which she exhibited her work.

Artworks and artifacts were the starting point for a new associative reading of the collection of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, and with her intervention in de Appel arts center she exposed the architecture of the institution in a semi-archaeological manner. The floor, walls, map, all function as physical properties which together with the intangible surrounding stories, are assembled as starting point for a site-specific installation.

In the gallery black lines on the floor and walls form the enlarged outlines of existing objects - a cabinet, a printer, an art object for example. The original shape is not directly recognizable and now suggests a form of architecture. As “carriers” for a series of objects, framed compositions, they become virtual spaces parallel to the actual and emotional space. In changing shapes, these compositions reoccur. Parts of frames, dried fruit, and foam corner protectors on the work table of the studio expose, as a collection, a system of connections. Knowledge and stories lurk in (accidentally) left behind material. The invisible expresses itself in unexpected and fleeting moments. The framed and captured composition finds its counterpart in the street: cans, cigarette butts, stones and leaves, carelessly thrown away or brought together by urban movements at a specific time. Tested by the same system of the collection, they are captured in aluminum, and reappear in the contours on and in the wall.

In layered wall elements of wood and plaster, we encounter the compositions of objects. Pink lamps, which are used to accelerate growth processes of plants and crops, highlight the constellation. Despite the lamps’ intention of acceleration, these sculptures in fact capture a moment. It remains unknown whether this captured moment is a skeleton for what is yet to come, or a relic, a ruin, of what once was.

I’m surprised that history is constructed from elements that happen to endure the test of time, without verifying what was lost. As if history travels directly from A to B. Precisely these subjective connections, the random relations that define the ‘true’ events, act as an important starting point for different and new insights. [SnvI]

The exhibition #+28.00 contains two works from the series Second Spade, a collaboration with designer Arnout Meijer.

Saskia Noor van Imhoff (1982) lives and works in Amsterdam. She studied at the Rietveld Academie (2004-2008) and was artist in residence at De Ateliers (2011-2012) and Kunstlerhaus Bethanien (2013). Recent solo exhibitions: ‘#+23.00’, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (NL), ‘#+21.00’, de Appel arts centre, Amsterdam (NL); ‘#+14.00’, Galerie Fons Welters, Amsterdam (NL); ‘#+12.00’, Ruisdael Stipendium i.c.w. Willem de Rooij, Bad Bentheim, (GER). Furthermore her work was on view in group shows such as ‘The Eight Climate’, 11th Gwangju Biennial, South Korea; ‘Museum On/Off’, Centre Pompidou, Paris (FR); ‘Hyperconnected’, Moscow Biennial, MMOMA, Moscow; ‘The small i’, Galerie Gabriele Senn, Vienna; ‘Affinities #1’, Galerie Fons Welters, Amsterdam (NL); ‘Languageleaps’, Gallery Plan B, Berlin; ‘Less is more, More or less’, TENT, Rotterdam (NL); ‘As everything moves’, NODE, Center for Curatorial Studies, Berlin; ‘Volkskrant Beeldende Kunst Prijs’, Stedelijk Museum Schiedam (NL); ‘R&D Department of Black Mountain College show’, W139, Amsterdam (NL). Van Imhoff’s work is acquired by collections of a.o. the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Museum Voorlinden in Wassenaar and the Verbeke Foundation in Kemzeke, Belgium.

Van Imhoff recently won the ABN AMRO Art Award 2017. In the context of this prize she will present her work in November 2017 at the Hermitage in Amsterdam.