Censored pornography

It was a very crowded opening at De Service Garage yesterday evening. The exhibition is entitled 'Censored pornography – DOGtime's Teachers Exposure'. DOGtime is Gerrit Rietveld Academy's five years evening study programme. 160 students, 35 teachers, 2 departments: Fine Arts and Interaction Design/Unstable Media. Students always want to know what the teachers do and make, with this exhibition they show it all. (Exhibition until April 5.)

Vague

Unfortunately, the exhibition 'Documenta documents: Heyboer revisited' by Jasmina Fekovic at Outline is quite disappointing. Just one short film, and not a very interesting one too. It shows some vague shots of late Anton Heyboer's dog in the cropped house where the excentric artist used to live. There's a voice over by Heyboer himself, I'm not sure what he's mumbling about. I'm afraid it's all totally irrelevant. (Exhibition until April 4, 2009.)

Nice smelling slaughterhouse

Painter Rob van de Werdt (now in a group show at Arti) is also (together with Nienke Vijlbrief) running P/////AKT, an alternative space located at the Zeeburgerpad 53. It funcions as a platform for contemporary art, focusing on art's and the artist's autonomy. No relational estheticism here. Currently P/////AKT is running the exhibition 'In between and let's make things better', a solo by Rob van de Werdt himself. Why not, I guess. 

Again, he shows works that seem to be more about paint than they are about painting. Some more cut open paint cans, a Frieze Art Fair-bag on the floor filled with used-up paint tubes, and there's also a football laying around, made out of emptied paint tubes pressed together. The most spectacular work is hiding behind a sliding door with lots of finger prints on it: a build-in space which is completely drenched in oil paint. It's looks like some sort of a slaughterhouse, but it smells wonderful. (Exhibition until March 22, 2009)

For all you paint lovers

Arti et Amicitiae is actually hosting two shows at the moment. Next to the 'Contemporary Semantics Beta' show, there's also a very different exhibition going on, entitled 'Power to the Paint'. It shows works by the three painters Frank Ammerlaan, Joachim Grommek and Rob van de Werdt. All three work in different ways, but they share a conceptual approach towards the art of painting. 

Ammerlaan likes to struggle with paint, working in many layers and partly scraping them off again. Grommek is more subtile, investigating a variety of monochrome colorfield combinations. And Van de Werdt is cutting open used paint cans, to show what the left-over, dried up paint inside looks like. The show is pretty hardcore.

(Exhibition until March 22, 2009.)

EGO

Crystal Antlers singer/bassplayer started out with 'EGO' written on his swetter. At the end of the concert it only said 'G'. The other letters had fallen off. It was a very powerful gig.

The Beanery: live!

Watch Edward Kienholz's famous installation work The Beanery (1965) performed live and in a real café! One week only, at 4 p.m. (starting today, until next Friday) Mara Joustra and Thomas Plas, students at the Rietveld Art Academy, will perform this most popular work from the Stedelijk Museum's art collection at café Belgique, Gravenstraat 2 (near Dam square). It's part of Zichtbaar Afwezig (Visibly Absent), a project with art students wh0 make some of the well-known works from the art collection of the Stedelijk visible at several locations in Amsterdam. (The Stedelijk itself is closed until April 2010 due to construction work on their building at Museum square. Photo: Ernst van Deursen.)

Fabchannel stops

I just received an e-mail by Fabchannel. 'We quit,' it says, completely out of the blue. 'Enjoy one more week of free concerts.' Appearantly most record labels still don't allow Fabchannel to film and broadcast their artists concerts. Also the economy gets blamed. After nine years they just can't manage anymore. This evening they live stream Crystal Antlers concert at Paradiso, next Friday they'll pull the plug. It's terrible news and it's a real shame. Where can we now go and watch all the great concerts that we couldn't attend? 

For all you pixel lovers

Last weekend the Dutch Institute for Media Art (NIMK) showed a reconstruction of Projekt I-'90, a work by Dutch computer art pioneer Peter Struycken (b. 1939), that he created in 1989 for the exhibition 'Energieën' ('Energies') at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. It's a projection of shifting abstract forms and colours, originally shown on 16 mm film and slides. At the NIMK the digital reconstruction of Projekt I-'90 (done by the Stedelijk together with the Dutch Filmmuseum) was simply beamed on a wall.

The reconstruction of such a work is an interesting and complicated matter – but I'm not going into that. The thing is, I was pleasantly surprised by the work's freshness. Peter Struycken is of course 'old school'; it was 1969 when he first started to use the computer to make art. His work is rather 'formal', in a seventies sort of way; it mainly focusses on computer generated structures and colours. Does this sound exciting to you? I'm sure it doesn't. Nevertheless, please take a look at a very short (and very shaky, sorry) clip of the projected work. Even if you're not the big pixel loving kind, you must admit this is a very beautiful piece of work.

But is this stuff still relevant? Appearantly it is. Check Calibration Celebration (on the melody of 'Holiday' by Madonna), a recent work by young Dutch artist Constant Dullaart (b. 1979). You can still see it at Arti et Amicitiae (until March 22), it's part of their current group show Contemporary Semantics Beta (also curated by Dullaart). The work is a collage made out of found images used to calibrate printers and monitors. Seen in lights changing colour (disco lights), the collage seem to behave as animated .gif pictures that are normaly only seen on computers. This is what digital formalism looks like in the naughties.

(I apologize for the bad quality of the clips, it's just to give you an impression. If possible, please go see the work for real.)

Varèse at Holland Festival 2009

This year's Holland Festival will be taking place June 4-28. The Holland Festival has been the trend-setting performance arts festival in the Netherlands since 1947, annually presenting exceptional work at the international level. This 62nd edition has 'Serenity & Anxiety' as its central theme. There will be special attention for French-American composer and 'Father of Electronic Music' Edgard Varèse (1883-1965). His complete works will be performed, which sounds spectacular. (For those of you who never heard any of his music, you can listen some of it here). The new website for this years edition of the festival has gone online past Tuesday and ticket sales have started. Just so you know, the Antony and the Johnsons concert, together with the Dutch Metropole Orchestra, June 22 at Carré, has already sold out. 

It's live and it's free

Tickets are still available, but for all of you who can't come: Fabchannel is live-streaming the Crystal Antlers concert of upcoming Friday at Paradiso. It's free and starts around 8 p.m. 

Excentric, Romantic, Swedish

Documentarista documents: Heyboer revisited by Dutch artist Jasmina Fekovic at Outline, Oetewalerstraat 73, Amsterdam. Fekovic (1976), invited by guest curator Francesco Bernardelli and who recently had a solo show at MuHKA in Antwerp, Belgium, is showing a new documentary-project around Dutch artist/excentric Anton Heyboer (1924-2005), best known for living together with four wives. (Opening: March 7, 17-19 hrs. Exhibition until April 4, 2009.)

Distinguished by the Swans by young American artist Erin Dunn at W139, Warmoestraat 139, Amsterdam. Using pastels and oil paint, airbrush techniques and holographic stickers, feathers and flowers, burning candles and impossibly dark crimson strawberries, fresh and wilted parrot tulips and a Dutch windmill fashioned from coloured pipe cleaners, Dunn (b. 1982) conjures up a cosmos that is Romantic in the true sense of the word. (Opening: March 13, 21 hrs. Exhibition until April 12, 2009.)

She Who Speaks, the first Dutch solo exhibition by Swedish artist Carl Johan Högberg (b. 1979) at Smart Project Space, Arie Biemondstraat 105-113, Amsterdam. Högberg is currently participating in the De Ateliers programme. (Exhibition: March 14 until May 3, 2009.)

Wakey, wakey! Here's Ponytail

Yep, Ponytail live at Paradiso last night was beyond expectations. Why actually? I heard about their reputation (for instance, they were named 'best live band' by Batlimore City Paper in 2007) and saw them play a few songs live before. But that was just on my tiny computer screen. Also, I almost can't listen to all the songs on their record in one go. It's just too hectic and noisy. Not that I don't like it, because I do, it's great. 

Their sound (surf rock?) has been compared to Deerhoof, amongst others. But Deerhoof is a bit more 'arty' or 'nerdy' I would say. I've seen Deerhoof playing live too, a couple of months ago at the Milkyway, and they sound much more controlled. Except for the possessed drummer Greg Saunier the band stays relatively cool, with Satomi Matsuzaki singing friendly melodies in her child-like voice.

With Ponytail all four band members go completely overboard from scratch. And singer Molly Siegel is a charismatic front figure, moving in her own strange way, jumping up and down with eyes closed, shouting and screeming 

like a crazy person. 

It was also a nice contrast with School of Seven Bells, who played just before Ponytail on the same stage. Their show was also quite good (great guitarist!), but they sounded and looked so very sophisticated that I couldn't help my mind drifting off once and a while. Ponytail woke me up good – and when I got home I fell asleep with a smile on my face. 

C.F. – the new James Ensor?

Powr Mastrs (Vol 1.) by C.F. This is the first volume of what seems to be a projected ten- (or six-)volume series by mysteriously named comic artist C.F. (Chris Forgues, who is also active in the American underground noise scene under the name of Kites). I noticed his art work for the first time when I read the 2007-volume of the brilliant Best American Comics-series, which was edited by Chris Ware.

I think it's extremely

beautiful. C.F.'s work reminds me a little bit of the drawings and etchings by Flemish master James Ensor. The story in Powr Mastrs is completely insane, in a nice way that is. It's oddball scifi with a whole cast of superhero-like beings with names like Subra Ptareo, Naphta, Ajax Lacewing and Mosfet Warlock. 

The second volume has also already been published and is just as great as the first. C.F. uses a bit of colour in it on some of the pages, which looks nice. Powr Mastrs is published by Picturebox Inc., which puts out lots of interesting stuff (also some of the Paper Rad-work).

Pink Max Ernst

Another concert tip: Crystal Antlers at Paradiso, upcoming Friday, March 6, 2009. The self-released version of their debut ep had a pink version of a collage from Max Ernst's La femme 100 têtes (1929) on the cover. Appearantly their percussionist is named Sexual Chocolate. They sound great too, especially live and at night.

Searching for the Unknown

In Search of the Unknown at the Nederlands Instituut voor Mediakunst, Keizersgracht 264 (until April 25, 2009). 

Group show with works by: Neïl Beloufa, Persijn Broersen & Margit Lukács (image), Herman Chong, Graham Ellard & Stephen Johnstone, Johannes Heldén, Sebastian Diaz Morales, Ann Lislegaard, r a d i o q u a l i a, Semiconductor, Mark Aerial Waller.