Kunstinstituut Melly Archive

Item sets

• Dumas Roosen Van Warmerdam
  As of 1995, the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science has placed the organization of the Dutch contribution to the Venice Biennial under the auspices of the Mondriaan Foundation. The Mondriaan Foundation appointed Chris Dercon, then director of Witte de With, as curator of the Dutch contribution for the 46th Venice Biennale. At the Venice Biennale in 1995, the Dutch pavilion housed a joint, thematic presentation of paintings, sculptures and films by Marlene Dumas, Maria Roosen and Marijke van Warmerdam. They showed recent and new work made especially for Venice. After studying at Ateliers ’63 in Haarlem, Marlene Dumas (Cape Town, 1953) has exhibited with great success in the Netherlands and abroad since the early 1980’s. In Venice she enjoyed the unusual distinction of being doubly represented at the Biennale: the other exhibition was Identità e Alterità, in the Palazzo Grassi and the Italian pavilion in the Giardini. On 6 June 1995, moreover, The Particularity Of Being Human, a major Dumas retrospective combined with work by Francis Bacon, opened at the Castello di Rivoli, near Turin. Maria Roosen (Oisterwijk, 1957), graduated from the Academie voor Beeldende Kunsten in Arnhem in 1983, and Marijke van Warmerdam (Nieuwer Amstel, 1959) from the Rijksacademie in Amsterdam in 1990. Both are Marlene Dumas’s juniors, a factor which was all the more important now that the directorship in Venice has scrapped Aperto. Dumas, Roosen and Van Warmerdam, despite their different approaches, complemented one another in the theme that interested us: the image of the “intermediate body.” By that token the presentation fell into line with the central theme chosen by the directors of the 46th Venice Biennale: Image versus Icon, a combination of a variety of exhibitions which examined the fast-changing representation of human identity. The exhibition was conceived around Rietveld’s arrangement of the pavilion into three more or less separate rooms: a gallery opposite the entrance, occupying the entire width of the building, and two smaller rooms, each filling approximately a quarter of the space. The choice and arrangement of the works fully preserved the relationship to the basic square shape of the pavilion. Participants Marlene Dumas, Maria Roosen, Marijke van Warmerdam Curators Chris Dercon <div class="
• HEINEKEN_LEZING
  Record created from the archive project register (access_project / 2026 projects). No corresponding page exists on the institution’s website.
• Cosmoville / Hyde Park
  Both the exhibitions Cosmoville by Eleanor Bond and Hyde Park by Brandt Junceau were literally and figuratively about reconstruction. By creating depictions of fictitious histories, Bond’s paintings and Junceau’s sculptures re-invent the genre of the historical tableau. Within the framework of Rotterdams celebration of fifty years reconstruction since World War II, Canadian artist Eleanor Bond (1948) was invited to work for a half year in the city on a new series of paintings on Rotterdam and its periphery. Her project, Cosmoville, was in keeping with the nearly lost tradition of commissioning painters and photographers to visually record the growth and expansion of cities. By way of fictitious documentation, Bond painted a possible future history of Rotterdam. Her panoramic paintings showed the city of Rotterdam in saturated, unnatural colors and from an unrealistic, aerial perspective. Carrying such narrative titles as Activity in the Inner Harbour Area Is Regenerated by the World Botanical Garden, Constructed with Recycled Materials from the Glass City, her works speculated on the outcome of Rotterdam’s continual reconstruction and transformation. Her urban landscapes lay bare the contradictions of architectonic and urban development solutions, emphasizing ecological and social problems while provoking the consideration of alternatives. The Cosmoville series was shown in combination with an earlier cycle of paintings about Canada, entitled Social Centers (1989-91). The exhibition Hyde Park by American artist Brandt Junceau (1959) was conceived as a historiographic project. It placed his work within the tradition of two predecessors, the American president Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882-1945) and the artist Elie Nadelman (1882-1946). During his presidency, Roosevelt designed a library complex to accommodate his presidential archives. He organized the site, at his birthplace Hyde Park in Dutchess County, New York, so that the total complex would represent an overview of American architectural styles, with the library building itself being an imitation of a seventeenth-century Dutchess County farmhouse. Nadelman put together the largest collection of folk art and antiquities ever in the United States. After the Depression had forced him to sell his collection, he created a new collection of plaster figurines. The so-called Dolls were loosely modeled after reproductions from archeology books and clippings from newspapers and popular magazines, mingling fragments from different origins in each figure. Without feeling restricted by historicity, both Nadelman and Roosevelt imitated historical collections through a living evocation of the past. Their subversive mimesis of historical scholarship was duplicated in Junceau’s exhibition by the mimetic character of his work. In Hyde Park, which took the form of a fictive museum, Junceau presented his own casts and their molds next to Roosevelt and Nadelman's imitations, as such confusing the notions of renewal and authorship, on which the traditional concepts of linear history and artistic innovation are based. Participants Eleanor Bond, Brandt Junceau Curators Chris Dercon <div class="
• Archive Project
  Record created from the archive project register (access_project / 2026 projects). No corresponding page exists on the institution’s website.
• Still/ A Novel
  Still/A Novel was a two part-project that paid homage to the 100th anniversary of cinema. Tracing the origins and influences of cinema and photography in art, it was director Chris Dercon’s last exhibition at Witte de With as well as a documentary on the future of the cinema that he directed for Dutch television (VPRO). The exhibition presented works by Eadweard Muybridge (1830-1904) and Jan Dibbets (1941) as well as homage’s to Muybridge by Carl Andre (1935) and Marcel Broodthaers (1924-1976). The exhibition’s point of departure was the interest that artists such as Mel Bochner, Jan Dibbets, Hollis Frampton, Dan Graham and Sol Lewitt had in Muybridge’s Animal Locomotion. In the late sixties, these artists renewed interest in Muybridge by making works inspired by his motion studies and publishing articles about his work. The serial structure of Muybridge’s photographic project was essential to these artists. At Witte de With the exhibition confronted 100 collotypes from Animal Locomotion with 400 contact sheets made by Dibbets between 1967 and 1995 as the basis of his photographic work. In terms of philosopher Gilles Deleuze’s concepts of image and movement and image and time, used to analyze the structure of cinema, the photographic sequences of these two artists employ the basic elements of film. The exhibition also included STILL/ A NOVEL, a set of 98 poems by Carl Andre, which imitates the sequential structure of Muybridge’s Animal Locomotion in a series of phrases from Muybridge's biography. The viewer had to reconstruct the narrative from the cryptic phrases, just as he had to reconstruct time and movement from the stills in Muybridge’sAnimal Locomotion or Dibbets’s contact sheets. The exhibition also included humorous drawings by Broodthaers that referred to the cartoons provoked by the original publication of Animal Locomotion. The documentary dealt with questions about the future of cinema, the increasing use of film by artists, and the current tendency of presenting film in the context of the art museum. It featured, among others: Chantal Ackerman, Matthew Barney, Raymond Bellour, Kerry Brougher, Hartmut Bitomsky, Catherine David, Craigie Horsfield, Rem Koolhaas, James Lingwood. Bruce Mau, Susan Meseilas, Marco Müller, Bruce Nauman, Stephen Prina, Charles Ray, Harald Szeeman, Jeff Wall and Christopher Williams. Participants Marcel Broodthaers, Jan Dibbets, Eadweard Muybridge, Stephen Prina Curators Chris Dercon Network Lantaren Venster <div class="
• In-between
  Dutch artist Zeger Reyers (1966) realized the project Onder-tussen (In-between) at the occasion of the exhibition Voorwerk 5. In reaction to the state of the building where Witte de With is housed, Reyers made an installation with oyster mushrooms for the second-floor toilets. Reyers’s installation was part of a series of in-situ projects for Witte de With’s stairwell that has included works by artists such as Philip Akkerman and Willem Oorebeek. Yet Onder-tussen is by nature less permanent than the other installations. The mushroom's development has always been and remains unpredictable; even if the installation were to be removed, its traces would be left behind in Witte de With’s building for eternity. Participants Zeger Reyers Curators Roland Groenenboom, Rutger Wolfson <div class="
• 16 General
  Record created from the archive project register (access_project / 2026 projects). No corresponding page exists on the institution’s website.
• Voorwerk 5
  Voorwerk 5 was new director Bartomeu Mari’s first exhibition at Witte de With. The exhibition included works by Dutch artist Yvonne Dröge-Wendel (1991), Belgian artist Christoph Fink (1963), Israeli artist Sigalit Landau (1969), and Spanish artist Ana Prada (1965). Voorwerk 5 was the fifth exhibition in the recurrent series. Voorwerk, meaning preliminary work, is Witte de With’s annual exhibition of younger artists. As a series, it seeks to provide the first substantial presentation of works by relatively unknown artists. Within the art world’s tendency to formulate relationships, Voorwerk is a peripheral event, captivating because of the heterogeneous character of the work. There are no common denominators or themes in these exhibitions, rather the artists’ works and ideas are left open for comparison. Yvonne Dröge-Wendel investigates the relationship between people and things. She considers objects indispensable extensions of the human body; without them man cannot exist. Dröge affirmed this relationship by marrying a piece of furniture and assuming its brand name, Wendel, next to her own. For Witte de With, Dröge-Wendel created the installation Wooden Sticks. It presented a heterogeneous collection of pictures of people holding sticks, made either during her trips to various countries or reproduced from magazines and art history books. These pictures all had one thing in common: they focused on the contact point between man and stick, revealing the object as an extension of the hand. Trips by plane, train, bicycle and walks through such cities as New York, Brussels, Venice and Rotterdam form the starting point for the works of Christoph Fink. He designs ingenious systems to document his traversed routes, supplementing the usual place markers with less stable data, such as chance meetings, variable weather conditions, temporal traces of smell or sound and personal musings. All notes are accompanied by precise time indications, resulting in what the artist calls a “cartography of the moment”. Fink’s drawings deny the aims of official cartography; his calculations don’t provide a factual and orderly registration of the landscape, but delight in the complexity of personal experience. The work of Sigalit Landau comments on the social and political implications of the notion of territory. She builds installations from household goods and building construction materials. Her tents and shelters offer no protection, but bear the marks of destruction and conflict, as seen among communities which cannot achieve social integration and are left adrift, as in Landau’s native country, Israel. In Sandblasting Lighthouse, for example, which Landau created especially for Voorwerk 5, the lighthouse has lost its lantern and looks like a stranded bark; it is no longer a landmark but a shelter wrenched open, “exposed”. Ana Prada extracts inconspicuous consumer articles, such as panties, paper bags and plastic knives, from their familiar household environment. Each object is pulled apart, examined and cut to reveal its hidden visual possibilities. She then pastes or tapes a multitude directly onto the exhibition space walls, incorporating them into a sculptural configuration. Through these performative interventions, Prada imparts everyday objects with an unexpected yet subtle poetry. Participants Ana Prada, Sigalit Landau, Christoph Fink, Yvonne Dröge Wendel Curators Bartomeu Marí <div class="
• WdW Name Change
  Record created from the archive project register (access_project / 2026 projects). No corresponding page exists on the institution’s website.
• Manifesta I
  Manifesta is a new international art manifestation, which takes place every two years in a different European city. The first edition of Manifesta took place in Rotterdam, at local art institutions. The curators of Manifesta 1 were Rosa Martinez (Barcelona), Viktor Misiano (Moscow), Katalin Néray (Budapest), Hans Ulrich Obrist (Paris/Vienna) and Andrew Renton (London). They conceived the manifestation around a series of themes, such as Declining and Becoming, Two Breeding Flowers Will Never Breed the Same, and Laboratory for Comparative Studies. The tradition of large exhibitions on contemporary art has mainly been defined by documenta in Kassel and the Venice Biennial. These two manifestations represent the conventional models for group exhibitions: either the expression of the vision of one curator, or an unconnected assembly of national presentations. Manifesta 1 intended to develop an alternative model for exhibitions of contemporary art. The Manifesta curators, who chose the theme of migrations for the exhibition at Witte de With, selected the following eight artists for the exhibition at Witte de With: Róza El-Hassan (1966, Budapest), Carl Michael von Hausswolff (1964, Stockholm), Eva Marisaldi (1966, Bologna), Jenny Marketou (1951, Athens/New York), Hale Tenger (1960, Istanbul), Henrik Plenge Jacobsen (1967, Copenhagen/Paris), Uri Tzaig (1965, Tel Aviv) and Susann Walder (1959, Zurich). It was intended that the theme do justice to the cultural diversity in Europe as well as be an exhibition model for interaction and collaboration. Migrations also referred to Manifesta’s aim to go beyond the dominant art-world conventions and boundaries, by being a biennial without a fixed location or identity. The exhibition at Witte de With could therefore be considered a model for the entire manifestation. To reflect on this guest exhibition, Witte de With further organized a discussion about the implications of the exhibition model Manifesta 1 put forward. It was striking that Manifesta had presented itself, almost in opposition to its theme, as a strictly European biennial. Rasheed Araeen, founding editor of the art magazine Third Text (Third World Perspectives on Contemporary Art and Culture), questioned the curators and artists about the meaning and potential of such terms as migration, hybridity and flux within these boundaries. Participants Rasheed Araeen, Róza El-Hassan, Carl Michael von Hausswolff, Eva Marisaldi, Jenny Marketou, Katalin Néray, Henrik Plenge Jakobsen, Hale Tenger, Uri Tzaig, Susann Walder Curators Rosa Martinez, Viktor Misiano, Katalin Néray, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Andrew Renton Network Centrum Beeldende Kunst Rotterdam, Chabot Museum, Kunsthal Rotterdam, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, NAi Rotterdam, Natuurhistorisch Museum Rotterdam, Nederlands Fotomuseum, V2_ <div class="
• Tony Brown — Downtime
  Canadian artist Tony Brown (1952) investigates the technological nature of late-twentieth century society. Keeping close track of the ongoing technological developments, Brown mixes industrial robotics, computer technology, information theory, visual art, cinema and architecture to explore technology’s impact on everyday life. His installations confront the dream of what technology might bring with insight into how it really functions in society, revealing the relationship between technology and power. They always include an element of danger, a possibility of catastrophe. The title of the exhibition Downtime refers to the period in which computer systems are inactive because of failure. The exhibition showed a survey of Brown's work, from the emphatically mechanical work Two Machines for Feeling (1984) to Better Living through Remote Access (1996), made especially for the exhibition at Witte de With, which takes on the new digital and communication technologies. Both works address the involvement of technology in gender issues. Two Machines for Feeling plays male and female cliché images against each other by opposing the figure of a robot with a hologram of a kitsch ballerina. In Better Living through Remote Access, Brown logs into a direct Internet connection, a sex-chatbox, and projects the assumed names of the users as they log in, as well as the accompanying photographs they provide of themselves. While the former work focuses on the imposition of gender stereotypes, the latter shows how the Internet functions as a stage for constructing fictional identities. Other installations, such as Chute Libre (1992-93) and Living in the Hot House (1993), address the modernistic pursuit of a standardization in living, with its inherent repetition and anonymity. In Living in the Hot House an open architectural model spins at high speed, becoming a screen on which images of the interior spaces in the construction – examples of cliché styles from the fifties to the eighties – and an ergonomic figure are projected. In Chute Libre, the spinning of an architectural structure rises to maximum speed, and is periodically slowed down only to speed up again. The same wind that makes the piece spin also pushes the viewer away, providing him with a metaphorical as well as physical sense of a system driven to the point of collapse or explosion. Downtime online At the occasion of the R96 festival, Brown created an Internet project that digitally reconstructed the entire Downtime exhibition at Witte de With. This project was the first interactive, three-dimensional animated exhibition on the Internet. With this virtual exhibition by Tony Brown, Witte de With started its exploration of the significance of the new media for contemporary art. The Internet project was realized in collaboration with Internet Providers Rotterdam and PTT Telecom, Rotterdam. A more technologically advanced and comprehensive rendition of the virtual exhibition Downtime is availabe on CD-Rom. Participants Tony Brown Curators Bartomeu Marí, Rutger Wolfson Network Württembergischer Kunstverein <div class="
• Frederick Kiesler 1890 – 1965
  Frederick Kiesler 1890 – 1965 was the first retrospective in The Netherlands of the oeuvre of Romanian-American artist Frederick Kiesler (1890-1965). The exhibition presented original models, drawings, documents, photographs and writings by Kiesler. The exhibition focused in particular on his designs for cinemas and theaters (1923-61); his exhibition designs (1924-47); and his lifelong scrutiny of the conventions of modern architecture, which culminated in the Endless House (1950-61). Kiesler was a revolutionary artist, who combined architecture with industrial design, set design, film, painting and sculpture. His radically inventive work was often well in advance of what his contemporaries were doing. For example, Kiesler experimented with optical mechanisms to manipulate vision for his set designs for Carel Capek’s R.U.R. (1923) by incorporating the new technological possibilities of film. He developed ideas about the use of biotechnology in architecture and industrial design, investigating the interaction between the human body and its architectural environment. In Space House (1933), for example, Kiesler sought to mobilize the inhabitant’s sensuality by means of automatic closing and opening systems, and through the use of materials such as rubber, sponge and oiled silk; the house thus functions as an object of contemplation and experiment, a space that echoes the body and responds in its turn. Kieslers works are invariably concerned with the realization of the “endless”. In contrast with the dogma of modernist architecture, the “endless” is essentially anti-functionalist, inspired by the cyclical rhythms of life itself. As Kiesler commented in 1961: “Variability is one of the most important aspects of architecture, but most of our colleagues know nothing about it, because they freeze every building in specific functions. Their offices are frigidaires of inertia … Functionalism is determination and therefore stillborn”. Few of Kiesler’s designs were ever realized; most of his projects could be considered visionary concepts, in a sense unrealizable by definition. Kiesler’s work has been underestimated and insufficiently explored, even though his revolutionary ideas were esteemed by such avant-garde artists as Theo van Doesburg, Marcel Duchamp and Fernand Leger; and his influence can even be seen in the development of subsequent generations of artists and architects, such as Dan Graham and Rem Koolhaas en Bernard Tschumi. Today, Kiesler’s pioneering ideas are more current than ever. Due to new technical possibilities in design (computer) and construction (new building materials and techniques), the curved lines and fluent forms of Kiesler’s architectural proposals now play an important role in the work of contemporary architects. The exhibition presented original models, drawings, documents, photographs and writings by Kiesler. It focused in particular on his designs for cinemas and theaters (1923-61); his exhibition designs (1924-47); and his lifelong scrutiny of the conventions of modern architecture, which culminated in the Endless House(1950-61). Frederick Kiesler 1890 – 1965 is a co-production of Witte de With and IVAM Centre Julio González in Valencia. The exhibition was produced in collaboration with the Musée nationale d’art moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris and the IVAM, Centre Julio González in Valencia. Participants Frederick Kiesler Curators Bartomeu Marí Network NAi Rotterdam, Centre Pompidou <div class="
• Curatorial fellowship
  Record created from the archive project register (access_project / 2026 projects). No corresponding page exists on the institution’s website.
• Tacita Dean and Gerco de Ruijter
  The exhibitions of Tacita Dean and Gerco de Ruijter showed two unique experiments with the camera and the medium of film. The exhibitions were associated with the 27th International Film Festival Rotterdam, which also showed a selection of Dean's films. Gerco de Ruijter Dutch artist Gerco de Ruijter (1961) experiments with the eye of the camera in an unusual way. He photographs landscapes through a camera attached to a kite. The bird's eye perspective and absence of a horizon line, our eye’s normal orientation point, create a peculiar and enigmatic abstraction of the Dutch landscape, making De Ruijter’s photographs closer to painting than to documentary photography. De Ruijter’s inventive and experimental working method permits us to go beyond the physical restrictions of our human vision. His work reminds us of our desire to see and our will to be able to realize an impossible experience. In films shot from his kite, it becomes apparent how little control De Ruijter has over the images his camera records. Go and have a look at two of these films, shot from a kite (Quicktime): mov1 and mov1. The viewer gets caught up in De Ruijter’s amazement with the beauty of what is for the human eye practically imperceptible –even unattainable– but which can be made visible with the help of the camera’s mechanical eye. Tacita Dean The work of British artist Tacita Dean (1965) revolves around the narrative character of cinema and the processes used to make films. Often inspired by chance discovery, she weaves her tales through films, photographs, drawings and objects. A picture or sentence in a book, a name or an incident, can lead to further investigation into the found subject. Her stories –which mostly recount mysterious incidents– shift between fact and fiction. Thus the viewer is able to draw his own interpretation from the complex web of associations evoked by the works. Dean untangles the medium of film in a variety of ways. Her exhibition appeared as a layered structure of projected and ‘real’ images, sound and stories. It presented film as the verbal and visual representation of sequential movement (storyboards drawn on blackboards); as sound (dubbing sheets and the work Foley Artist); as projected images and as stories (in the films); and as investigations and working processes (framed materials and documents). In 1994, Witte de With presented the first phase of Dean’s project Girl Stowaway in the group exhibition WATT. Participants Tacita Dean, Gerco de Ruijter Curators Roland Groenenboom, Rutger Wolfson <div class="
• 17 General
  Record created from the archive project register (access_project / 2026 projects). No corresponding page exists on the institution’s website.
• David Lamelas — A New Refutation of Time
  The exhibition A New Refutation of Time is Argentinean artist David Lamelas’s (Buenos Aires, 1946) first retrospective in Europe. At Witte de With Lamelas is presenting an overview of his photographic series, films and media installations. Three early installations, including Situación de tiempo, have been specially reconstructed for this exhibition. David Lamelas is one of the pioneers of the innovations in the sixties and seventies that redefined the status of art. Lamelas’s work from this period analyzes art as a means of communication, relating it to how information is conveyed by such media as the newspaper, radio and television. In light of the current discussion on the relationship between art and the entertainment industry, his critique of the passive role imposed on the public by the mass media is in particular once again topical. Lamelas’s work is unfettered. His search for new ways of making and presenting art brought him from Argentina to Europe, where he has maintained close ties with such artists and Marcel Broodthaers and Daniel Buren, and finally to the United States, where he has made the film and television industry the theme and context of his work. In retrospect, one can see that it was Lamelas’s decision to work beyond the institutional system of the visual arts that primarily caused his work to disappear from the public eye. With the exception of being included in the important retrospective Reconsidering the Object of Art 1965 – 1976 held by the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles in 1995, Lamelas’s work has hardly been shown since the seventies. A New Refutation of Time calls attention to Lamelas’s film and media installations at a moment in which they can again be meaningful. This work contrasts significantly with recent art, which frequently takes the mass media as a starting point. In the work of the younger generation of artists, which grew up with film and television, the critical distance with which Lamelas provided insight into the effects of the various media has given way to full acceptance of the media and their influence. The alienating effect that Lamelas realizes through his use of media is replaced in their work by a self-evident appropriation of television’s visual language. His work challenges us to again take distance and to question the role of such media as television and the new media. About the work Lamelas’s first works were paintings and “shaped canvasses” inspired by popular culture. He subsequently made “site-specific” sculptural installations that shattered the convention of the autonomous work of art. In these installations, rather than concentrating on the isolated art object, he stressed the artwork’s relationship with conventional exhibition architecture, thus bringing the supposed neutrality of the institutional framework into discussion. Lamelas further developed his critical practice of art by using the mass media and means of communication tools. For example, the installation Situación de tiempo (1967) consists of 17 television sets in a darkened space. The televisions are turned on but tuned to a non-existent channel; rather than conveying information as usual, they only transmit a bright light, thus becoming manifest as the carriers of information. During the highly talked about Venice Biennial of 1968 Lamelas turned the Argentinean pavilion into a center for information on the most important news of the day: the Vietnam War. The latest news was received by telex and read aloud in several languages through a microphone. Office of Information about the Vietnam War at Three Levels: The Visual Image, Text and Audio confronted the art public with political rather than aesthetic information. The installation thus recalled the original political function of the national pavilions at the Venice Biennial. In such works as Cumulative Script (1971) and Film Script (Manipulation of Meaning) (1972), Lamelas transferred his analysis of information to the realm of fiction. Through photographic series and film installations he investigated how meaning is constructed and manipulated by the sequential structure of film. In The Desert People (1974) Lamelas first film intended for the cinema rather than museum he combined genres of documentary and road movie. Reportage fiction meet as well in video films which imitated such stereotypical t.v. talk show evening news, made these works Los Angeles an ironic commentary on American commercial television where difference between news entertainment blurs. Realized in collaboration with the Kunstverein München, the Fundació Antoni Tàpies in Barcelona and the Fundação de Serralves in Porto, the exhibition has been generously supported by the Argentinean embassy in The Hague. Participants David Lamelas Curators Bartomeu Marí Network Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Gemeente Bibliotheek Rotterdam, Instituto Cervantes, Kunstverein München, Lantaren Venster, Museu Serralves <div class="
• Michel François — Manure, Nettles and Dandelions
  Since June 1996, François has been working on a permanent work commissioned by the Mondriaan Stichting’s Praktijkbureau Beeldende Kunstopdrachten for the De Kijvelanden detention clinic in Rotterdam. In a strikingly close collaboration between the artist and the inmates, François designed a display case in which they exhibit either something they made specially for the case or something of themselves. In response to his work for such an inaccessible institution, François will realize a specific project for public-orientated spaces of Witte de With. With a so-called “documentary” section of his exhibition consisting of objects and images, François will refer to the experiences he acquired through his contact with the detention clinic’s inmates. The personal perception of reality forms the main starting point for Michel François’ work. He inventories the world around us by way of antitheses: formal opposites such as the sculptural extremes of concave-convex and empty-full; and such opposites as freedom and imprisonment, poor and rich. Work versus free time is one of the contrasts that determines our day to day life. François attached wires with casts of neon lights throughout the entire exhibition space, referring to the industrial lightsource that determines the sphere of so many work places. Facing the lights was a large carpet on which the visitor could stretch before a scramble of televisions and watch François’ video works. Prison versus images of laughing and playing children (survival versus playing). Dark area versus light (night versus day). The exhibition incites a redefinition of the instances in which the structure of our society lies closed off: the public space of the museum against the inaccessible institution of the prison; school against house; playground against work space; social life against private life. François is interested in both the parts and the whole: the city as a geographic area in which individual worlds are simultaneously born side by side, where independent realities form at once one reality. By visualizing these opposites, François makes an appeal to our sensory perceptions and our capacity for interpretation as a means of raising individual and social consciousness. Michel François has never wanted to limit himself to one discipline. He uses all sorts of materials and a range of methods, combining industrial and natural objects, photographs and installations into a result that appeals to all of our senses. François analyzes and refers to everyday customs and habits in an associative manner without detracting from their general validity. According to François, we can become poetically acquainted with the world around us through our aesthetic experience. He shares the arte povera artist’s preference for materials devoid of artistic meaning, revealing their inherent sculptural and aesthetic qualities without negating their original identity. This honest attitude towards materials marks as well François’ project at Witte de With. The exhibition is made in collaboration of the Centre Cultural Tecla Sala, L’Hospitalet, in Barcelona. Participants Michel François Curators Bartomeu Marí Network Tecla Sala <div class="
• Fetishimage
  Is realistic representation still possible today? Fetishimage suggests that our understanding of the world is based not only on rational thought but also on a mental process comparable to figures of speech in poetry: metaphor, metonymy and synecdoche. The essence of poetry, the thing that distinguishes it from other functions of language, is image. Imagery does not describe or explain but shows; its effect is not based on deductive comprehension but on shock. It is this function of the image that is the focal point of an exhibition confronting art and poetry with each other. Western thinking is shaped by a notion of knowledge from which poetic language is excluded. Fetishimage presents the aesthetic experience as man’s relationship to the world in which knowledge and pleasure go hand in hand. The exhibition concept reflects recent attempts, as in documenta x, to broaden and intensify the territory of sensibility and to free aesthetics. Fetishimage reflects the interest of artists and poets in investigating the possibilities of representation. Glen Rubsamen (Los Angeles, 1957) deploys contradictory perspectives in seemingly hyper-realistic paintings of familiar cityscapes; he tests painting’s ability to represent reality through scientific perspective and to blend its ideal of verisimilitude with fiction. Edwin Zwakman (The Hague, 1969) uses photography’s ostensible objectivity for a realistic reproduction of the urban landscape; the landscapes and interiors are really models, though, photographed in Zwakman’s studio. The reality content of the photographs turns out to be a reconstruction, a metaphor for the way our urban planners construct the landscape. Carla Klein (The Hague, 1970) paints empty aquariums, display cases and light boxes, omitting their usual protagonists. She employs an unusual combination of figuration and abstraction which simultaneously evokes images and hides them from view. Empty figuration enables her to visualize a metaphorical void. Angel Vergara (Mières, 1958) endeavors to do justice to the transient, changeable side of reality. His schematic paintings of the Belgian economy or the life of Rubens walk the tightrope of order and chaos; instead of selecting and isolating similar data, he displays the entanglement of fact and fiction and of actuality and memory that characterizes our experience of reality. William Engelen (Weert, 1964) develops personal notation systems which visualize non-visual experiences such as music and space, in which time and motion play a central role. His contribution to the exhibition is a series of hypothetical architectonic depictions, which will unfold in time for the duration of the exhibition and actually move through the exhibition space. Every four days a new fragment is drawn in a different place in the exhibition. The old fragment is removed. In addition to the twelve sequential fragments, two works are present during the entire exhibiton period, as a point of reference for the twelve fragments. A version of the project tracing its successive stages can be seen on the Witte de With website, see Twelve Movements. Participants William Engelen, Carla Klein, Glen Rubsamen, Angel Vergara Curators Bartomeu Marí <div class="
• 20_general
  Record created from the archive project register (access_project / 2026 projects). No corresponding page exists on the institution’s website.
• Pierre Bismuth
  Central to the work of French artist Pierre Bismuth (1963) are perception and how perception relates to our choices and commitments. Memory and interpretations – and hence subjectivity – play a major role here. The compressed, mediated and channeled information we use in order to communicate is the basic material of Bismuths intricate installations. He compels the beholder to concentrate on the various components of a work simultaneously. He does so by, for instance, deliberately dissociating the installations image (video projection) and sound (headphones). An example is Thinking about me watching them (1997), consisting of a video projection with soundtrack of a street scene with a bar. Through the window of the bar we see two people talking. Headphones enable us to overhear what they are saying, but at the same time block out the street noises. It is up to the visitor to mentally join image and sound. Bismuth utilizes characteristics and structures of media like video, digital images and sound to activate the flow of thoughts and capture the spectators moment of consciousness. Whether we witness an apparently simple action in which the artist requires himself or someone else to make revelations about our verbal and non-verbal communication, or watch a series of projected digital photographs, the moment we realize that we are involved in simply ascertaining a primary events existence the work evokes our ability to take in and transform what we experienced. Participants Pierre Bismuth Curators Bartomeu Marí Supported By AFAA – Association Française d’Action Artistique, Ministère des Affaires Etrangères, Paris. <div class="
• Twelve Movements
  Twelve Movements by William Engelen is a project conceived for the exhibition Fetishimage. In the course of seven weeks, twelve movements took place in the exhibition spaces, following a rhythmical pattern. This internet version of Twelve Movements relates to the exhibition, documenting the twelve movements in cumalative succession. The movements concern fragments of changing hypothetical architectonic depictions drawn directly on the walls. They are configurations of fictitious spatial structures and patterns of movement, language, graphic musical notations and choreographic patterns. These elements mutually influence one another in a non hierarchical system. Every four days a new movement is actuated. A new fragment is drawn in a different place in the exhibition. The old fragment is removed. The Internet version of Twelve Movements relates to the exhibition, documenting the twelve movements in cumalative succession. Every four days a new fragment is added to the site. The old fragments remain on the net. The successive movements through the exhibition space can be followed by clicking the buttons, numbers 1 to 12 on the floor plan. In addition to the twelve sequential fragments, two works are present during the entire exhibition period. First, Composition no. 3, (B in the floor plan) a composition for snapping fingers and voice, in the form of a graphic notation on the windows of the front facade. Second, Exploded view no. 1, (A in the floor plan) an architectonic complex in which elements such as floor plans and language provide a connection to the twelve changing fragments. Timetable movements 1: 6 September – 10 September 2: 11 September – 16 september 3: 17 September – 20 September 4: 21 September – 24 September 5: 25 September – 28 September 6: 29 September – 2 October 7: 3 October – 6 October 8: 7 October – 10 October 9: 11 October – 14 October 10: 15 October – 18 October 11: 19 October – 22 October 12: 23 October – 26 October Participants William Engelen Curators Bartomeu Marí <div class="
• Rita McBride
  From 22 November 1997 through 11 January 1998, Witte de With presented Arena and National Chain, two new installations by the American artist Rita McBride. McBride’s work exists in the perimeters of art, design and architecture. In recent years, sometimes in collaboration with other artists, she has made site-specific works and objects in a wide range of materials (such as glass, bronze, rattan). Inspired by the environs of Witte de With, the two new installations literally transformed the exhibition space and provided a new structure for Witte de With. Arena is an oval grandstand which intersects and connects all the second-floor rooms at Witte de With. It is a large temporary, lightweight structure made of plywood covered on both sides with Twaron (an extremely tough aramide weave) and epoxy resin. Arena posesses a strong theatrical dimension. Upon entering Witte de With, the visitor immediately becomes part of the spectacle; alternating between actor and spectator. National Chain occupies the entire third floor at Witte de With. It is formed by a grid of metal strips used in the sectional ceilings so characteristic of modern architecture. This universal standard system is found in spaces with widely differing functions, such as residential or office buildings and airports. McBride mounted the grid upside down and at shoulder height, so that it acts as a lowered ceiling for Arena.In order to enter National Chain, the visitor will bend and rise repeatedly throughout the space, utilizing the open grid to accommodate this movement. Once inside the grid, one’s sense of inclusion is exaggerated further by the diagonally articulated grid juxtaposed with the wholly symmetrical architecture of Witte de With. The exhibition is accompanied by a publication in the form of a magazine devised by Rita McBride. Bartomeu Mari’s introduction is followed by Dominic van den Boogerd’s interview with Rita McBride, an essay by the German art historian Christian Rattemeyer and an article on Roman arenas by the American archeologist Paloma Schulz. After the presentation at Witte de With, Arena will be shown at the Kunstverein München. Participants Rita McBride Curators Bartomeu Marí Network Lantaren Venster, Moderna Museet Stockholm, NAi Rotterdam, Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden Supported By Arena Mondriaan Stichting / Praktijkbureau Beeldende Kunstopdrachten, Amsterdam; Stichting VSB Fonds, Utrecht; Akzo Nobel, Arnhem; Stichting Bevordering van Volkskracht, Rotterdam; and Stichting Verzameling Van Wijngaarden – Boot, Rotterdam. National Chain BOAG Bouwadviesgroep; C. Schol Schildersbedrijf; Hoek en Donker Bouwbedrijf B.V.; and BOVERO; all Rotterdam based. <div class="
• 93 General
  Record created from the archive project register (access_project / 2026 projects). No corresponding page exists on the institution’s website.
• 4 RMS W VU: wallpaper, lamps and plants. NEW.
  American artist John Baldessari realized a special project, which functioned as a framework for Home Screen Home. The walls of the exhibition spaces of Witte de With were covered with wallpaper designed by Baldessari, in combination with photographs of lamps and plants. With its reference to the home as the setting for watching television, junkfood and TV dinners, the wallpaper installation was an ironic comment on television culture. In relation to the exhibition Home Screen Home, John Baldessari realizes a special project: 4 RMS W VU: wallpaper, flowerpots, lamps, NEW. The project is a collage of wallpaper designed by Baldessari in combination with black-and-white photographs of lamps and flowerpots. The installation refers to domestic space as the setting for watching television. American artist John Baldessari (1931) has been very conscious of the effects of mass media on the spectator. In his photo work, he comments on the imagery of Hollywood movies, television, advertisements and photojournalism. His major tool is the principle of montage. Montage, as it was used by the avant-garde’s of the early twentieth century, for example in the films of Sergey Eisenstein or the photomontages of John Heartfield, strove for a clash of images. The aim of montage was to break the naturalism of the continuous filmstrip by replacing it with a disconnected assemblage of images. Mass media, however, would recuperate the very techniques of the avant-garde. By now the clash of images has become a common, everyday experience. As American critic John Miller observed in his essay on Baldessari, if the umbrella and the sewing machine once met by chance on Lautréamont’s surrealistic dissecting table, in advertisement that encounter has now become routine. The newspaper and television present ads, natural disasters and political events all on the same footing; because they have to compete with one another for attention, these otherwise dissociated items become comparably trivial. Both media have an effect of leveling and transvaluation that is characteristic of capitalist society. At a time when reading through a series of images has become so normal to mass media spectators that it seems to be a reflex response, Baldessari makes us stand still before the mechanisms of montage. In order to do this, he subjects the technique of montage to an ironic reversal. Instead of consciously arranging images according to a meaningful juxtaposition, he uses a kind of non-signifying montage, for example by shooting television movies at random with an intervalometer. By using the camera as an analytical tool that stops action, Baldessari reveals the latent, not manifest, meaning of mass media imagery. The project was realized in collaboration with the Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich and the Museu d’ Art Contemporani MACB, Barcelona. Participants John Baldessari Curators Bartomeu Marí Network M.A.R.T, MACBA, Migros Museum of Contemporary Art, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden <div class="
• 94 General
  Record created from the archive project register (access_project / 2026 projects). No corresponding page exists on the institution’s website.