Remco Torenbosch and Nickel van Duijvenboden
Opening: Saturday October 13, 2012 at 15:00
Duende, Tamboerstraat 9 Rotterdam
  

BRAK is proud to present BRAK 4.1, a duo presentation of the artists Remco Torenbosch and Nickel van Duijvenboden. The fourth BRAK theme Writisms revolves around the usage of text as artistic medium, whether as artobject or as reflective and analytical medium that is part of the artproduct. 

BRAK is a Rotterdam exhibition platform organizing four presentations annually within Duende. BRAK’s programmatical approach focuses on giving space for the expression of individual artistic practices while building up an overview of current methodologies specifically focusing on the development of autonomous art.

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Nickel van Duijvenboden investigates ways of writing that border on the visual arts. His work is about perception in all its facets, notably solitude, silence, landscape, alienation and trauma. Photography, his discipline of origin, has served as an entry point, and still is an essential –yet largely invisible– tool within his process. He is currently preoccupied with the autobiographical record both in written, visual and aural form, and its position within the art and literary contexts.

Born in Amsterdam, 1981, Nickel van Duijvenboden has studied photography at the Koninklijke Academie voor Beeldende Kunsten in The Hague. He graduated by presenting a collection of essays in lieu of images. The novella Plateau and a selection of adolescent texts called No mirror can guard you were published by Roma Publications in 2008 and 2011. His latest book, as yet unfinished, is a desert memoir. He occasionally exhibits visual work.

Nickel has engaged in longterm collaborations, presenting text as an equal pendant to the work of, among others, Gwenneth Boelens, Wytske van Keulen and Geert Goiris. His reflective writings include extensive interviews with artists and numerous articles for Endless Lowlands, an online initiative of which he is a founding member. Since 2008 he has been developing a writing curriculum at the photography department of the Gerrit Rietveld Academy.

Remco Torenbosch presents a critical variety of situations and thoughts. The works that are presented are a reflection on the political and socio-economic changes to which Europe has recently been subjected. In this, Torenbosch investigates the language and manifestations through which a community and continent declares, represents and questions itself through the consciousness of contemporary and historical references. Within this research, Torenbosch tries to distil the situation as a return to a more human scale and perspective by underlining the importance of care and action. 

Within this exhibition Remco Torenbosch is showing components of his study on the concept of Europe entitled: European Conceptualization in analytical philosophy on history and present. The works that have emerged from this study are a reflection of the political, social and economic changes the European Union has undergone since the founding and the underlying accompanying utopian ideologies during the formation.

One element in this research is the creation of a collection fabric samples in the blue colour of the European flag, gathered in the countries of the European Union. With this collection of fabric samples Torenbosch is questioning if the collection can be ultimately considered as cultural objects and possibly can represent an ethnographic value as remnants from the various disappearing local textile industries, which results into wide social and economic changes. Within the colour differences between the fabric samples, this collection also underlines the European differences by country and it’s standard idea about the European blue. In the physical sense, the European blue colour functions as a monochrome within a modernist tradition with its purity laws, its longing for transcendence and an optimistic believe in the utopian potential. Simultaneously in a psychological sense the blue functions as a blue-screen (chroma key) where the broad and critical thoughts about Europe and the European Union can be projected, an idea that in both cases is a parallel to the so-called European collective thought.

Besides the collection of fabric samples a sound abstraction of the composition Ode to Joy is played several times a day. Ode to Joy is originally a poem written in 1785 by a young Friedrich Schiller and used in 1823 by Ludwig van Beethoven for the final scene in Symphony No. 9. Since 1972 this piece has been the unofficial anthem of Europe and since 1985 officially chosen as the anthem of the European Union. Friedrich Schiller said that he wrote Ode to Joy with too euphoric, megalomaniac and naive eyes of a young man, a statement that shows in retrospect strong similarities with the statements of Robert Schuman and Jean Monnet* during the creation of the European Economic Community; the forerunner of the European Union. For the recording of this piece, Torenbosch collaborated with a composer and recorded it without the backbone instrumental parts of this composition. By abstracting the original composition of Ode to Joy, the piece created a possibility for the listener to fill in the open parts of this so-called ‘collective composition’.

The research European conceptualization in analytical philosophy on history and present started at the end of 2011. Components of this research are shown in the solo exhibition EUROPA at GAMeC - Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Bergamo, Italy. And in the group exhibition Autumn or Moderism curated by Lorenzo Benedetti and took place at De Vleeshal and at the Temporary Gallery in Cologne, Germany.

*Robert Schuman and Jean Monnet are seen as the founding ‘fathers’ of the European Economic Community which was established on the 1st of January 1958, after signing the treaty of Rome. This treaty was signed on 25 March 1957 by Belgium, France, West-Germany, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Italy.