Street: behind the cliché

Item set

Title
Street: behind the cliché
Description
Witte de With is pleased to present the thematic group exhibition Street: behind the cliché. Open from 9 September until 19 November 2006, it features work in a range of media by 28 international artists.

In a city, the street can serve many purposes: it can be a sidewalk where a mass of people meet and pass each other on a daily basis; an infrastructure through which people move from A to B; an ideal space for consumerism to reach a broad audience. Today’s city streets can be thought of as post-public spaces, intimately interwoven with market mechanisms and forcefully, politically designed. ‘The street’ that used to be a synonym for ‘public space’ has now become highly regulated, ordered and controlled.

Not so long ago, Johan Remkes (Dutch State Secretary) pointed out in a governmental memorandum titled A Design Strategy for the Netherlands that we all need to strive for a ‘clean’, ‘safe’ and ‘intact’ public space. To think of the street as the ideal location on which the many-faceted, cultural life of the metropolis is shown now seems outdated, but still phrases such as street art and street culture are forever being used by numerous art institutions, generally funded with public money. The time is ripe for a reconsideration of how public space operates, especially in the Netherlands, where the notion is a perennially popular topic of discussion.

Nowadays it is rare to encounter critical reflections on aesthetic representation that do not involve the concept of space, whether its a social, emotional, institutional or economic space. Street: behind the cliché considers the particular section of public space called the street as a local theater, a stage on which the complex stratification of cultural codes is acted out and identity is formed. The exhibition therefore functions as an analysis of the interrelated phenomena that we encounter in our immediate surroundings, such as the fraught relationship between popular culture and sub-cultural identity, how ‘underground’ is now big business.

In the works included in the exhibition, twenty-eight artists express a varied fascination with city planning, failing modernity and its utopias, social and economic pressure, and the anonymity of everyday life and its worn-out routine. They dissect, analyze and redefine these phenomena to invite us to rethink contemporary society’s existing symbols of iconoclasm and idolatry, causing us to look behind the clichés that we encounter in the stream of life.

Artists: Joachim Baan (NL), David Blandy (UK), Henning Bohl (DE), Martin Boyce (UK), Tobias Buche (DE), Jason Dodge (US), Marius Engh (NO), Gardar Eide Einarsson (NO), Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard (UK), Isa Genzken (DE), Pieterjan Ginckels (BE), Sascha Hahn (DE), Laura Horelli (FIN), Pieter Hugo (ZA), Ian Kiaer (UK), Germaine Kruip (NL), Klara Liden (SE), Gareth Moore (CA), Alex Morrison (CA), Chloe Piene (US), Robin Rhode (ZA), Ugo Rondinone (CH), Matt Stokes (UK), Aram Tanis (NL), An Te Liu (CA), Luc Tuymans (BE), Silke Wagner (DE), and Tobias Zielony (DE).

Participants

Joachim Baan, David Blandy, Henning Bohl, Martin Boyce, Tobias Buche, Jason Dodge, Gardar Eide Einarsson, Marius Engh, Iain Forsyth, Isa Genzken, Pieterjan Ginckels, Sascha Hahn, Laura Horelli, Pieter Hugo, Ian Kiaer, Germaine Kruip, Klara Liden, Gareth Moore, Alex Morrison, Chloe Piene, Jane Pollard, Robin Rhode, Ugo Rondinone, Matt Stokes, Aram Tanis, An Te Liu, Luc Tuymans, Silke Wagner, Tobias Zielony

Curators

Nicolaus Schafhausen, Renske Janssen

Supported By

The British Council.

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Identifier
KIM-EXH-3442
06_6
Type
Exhibition
Date
2006-09-09/2006-11-19
Temporal Coverage
2006
Publisher
Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art
Spatial Coverage
Rotterdam
Language
en
Is Part Of
Exhibition history
Rights Holder
Kunstinstituut Melly
Creator
Alex Morrison
An Te Liu
Chloe Piene
David Blandy
Gardar Eide Einarsson
Gareth Moore
Germaine Kruip
Henning Bohl
Iain Forsyth
Ian Kiaer
Isa Genzken
Jane Pollard
Jason Dodge
Joachim Baan
Klara Liden
Laura Horelli
Luc Tuymans
Marius Engh
Martin Boyce
Matt Stokes
Pieter Hugo
Pieterjan Ginckels
Robin Rhode
Sascha Hahn
Silke Wagner
Tobias Buche
Tobias Zielony
Ugo Rondinone
Contributor
Nicolaus Schafhausen
Source
https://www.kunstinstituutmelly.nl/en/exhibitions/3442-street-behind-the-cliche
depiction
https://www.kunstinstituutmelly.nl/images/fkawdw_004826image.jpg?w=1451
has exact match
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