"The People's Art / A Arte do Povo"
2001-12-16 until 2002-02-10
Witte de With Center for Contemportary Art
Rotterdam, , NL

In his final exhibition as director of Witte de With, Bartomeu Marí shares his perspective on Dutch contemporary art. Porto 2001, Cultural Capital, invited Marí to make an earlier version of this exhibition for the former power plant Do Freixo in Porto in the Spring of this year. The exhibition received excellent reviews. In Witte de With, the artists show all new works, many of them especially made for this exhibition.

With: Anneke de Boer; Aloysius Donia; Florian Göttke; Hein Hage; Mathilde ter Heijne; Philippine Hoegen; Rob Johannesma; Jeroen Jongeleen; Laurent Malherbe; Aernout Mik; Jeroen Offerman; Vanessa Jane Phaff; Jan Rothuizen; Julika Rudelius; Gerco de Ruijter; Frank van der Salm; Peter Stel; Nasrin Tabatabai; Erik Wesselo; Edwin Zwakman.

The title of the exhibition The People's Art refers to the Dutch democratic tradition whose legendary openness and tolerance are the product of an intense social organization, spreading over every aspect of government, interest groups and human relations. This organization even extends to the Dutch landscape, which is almost entirely manmade, deftly designed and maintained by innumerable committees and rules. Dutch art, rather than openly resisting this organizational impulse, functions as its mild, ironic corollary. Closing the gap between art and artifice, it replicates the human made landscape in miniature, targets artificial human interaction and creates an altogether alien nether-land, an alternative order, in which it is possible to present the unfathomable and think the unthinkable. (Hans Ibelings) A bilingual catalogue (English / Portuguese) accompanies the exhibition.

Related Links:

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Other Important Exhibitions in Netherlands