|
GALERIE CHANTAL CROUSEL: Willem de Rooij - BLACK AND BLUE - 27 Oct 2012 to 24 Nov 2012 Current Exhibition |
||||
|
Willem de Rooij
BLACK AND BLUE at GALERIE CHANTAL CROUSEL Oct. 27, 2012 - Nov. 24, 2012 |
|||
|
||||
|
Willem de Rooij BLACK AND BLUE Oct. 27, 2012 - Nov. 24, 2012 The Chantal Crousel Gallery is delighted to announce Black and Blue, the new exhibition of Dutch artist Willem de Rooij. Since 2007, the artist has taken his inspiration from the structural polarity of woven fabric and thus initiated a reflection around contrast and nuance. Through their abstraction, the weavings aim at generating meaning through the material they are made of, not through external references. Rather than a treated surface, like that of a painting, the woven works are created by placing a cotton lengthwise (the warp) and weaving ten different mixtures of polyester sewing thread as well as reflecting synthetic strips crosswise (known as the woof). For this exhibition, Willem de Rooij presents four handwoven works streched on frame and a large wax print on cotton. Conceived as one installation, the five works make use of the same two colors : black and blue. The monochromatic appearance of the weavings reveal a gradual transformation, in the manner of the work Blue to Blue gradating from shiny blue to matt blue. The colorimetric modulations bring about a plurality, a diversity in the viewer’s perception of the works shown. Taken in their entirety, they embody both the sameness and difference, the individual and collective. The weavings presented at the Chantal Crousel Gallery are part of a larger series, for the creation of which Willem de Rooij forced himself to use a limited number of colors and sizes. The titles of the produced works, mostly taken from anagrams of the names of locations or place of presentation add to the myriad of links existing between the various works of this series. Inspired of the traditional Indonesian Batik fabrics, the fifth work presented in the exhibition reminds the influences due to colonialism. Produced in Ghana by a Dutch firm for this exhibition, Blue to Black (120 x 550 cm), invades the gallery space and refers to the flow of migrational and commercial routes between Africa, Europe and Indonesia. As a matter of fact, Batik fabrics, also known as wax print on cotton, originally from Indonesia, were first brought to Africa in the 19th century and the booming market was soon headed by Dutch firms. Over the last five years, the notion of « referentiality » and more precisely the strategies to bypass external references became important elements in de Rooij’s work. Throughout his career, the artist has analyzed the conventions of presentation and representation and assesses the tension between socio-political and autonomous image production. Willem de Rooij studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Akademie in Amsterdam from 1990-95 and at the Rijksakademie from 1997-98. He has been a tutor at De Ateliers in Amsterdam since 2002 and Professor of Fine Arts at the Städelschule in Frankfurt since 2006. De Rooij lives and works in Berlin. De Rooij worked and exhibited together with Jeroen de Rijke untill 2006. He received a Robert Fulton Fellowship at Harvard University in 2004 and represented the Netherlands at the Venice Biennale in 2005. His works are in the collections of the Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam), Hamburger Bahnhof (Berlin), MUMOK (Vienna), the MOMA in New York. De Rooij has participated in group exhibitions at the Kröller Möller Museum (Otterloo), the Centro Galego de Arte Contemporanea (Santiago de Compostella), PS1 (New York) and he curated Intolerance at the Neue Nationalgalerie (Berlin) in 2010. An installation at Bentheim Castle (Germany) and a large solo exhibition at the Kunstverein Munich opened in 2012 and his works will be presented at the Kunsthistorisches Museum of Vienna in 2013 |
||||
|
||||
re-title.com
International contemporary art
SIGN UP FOR NEWSLETTERS
SIGN UP for ARTIST MEMBERSHIP
SIGN UP for GALLERY MEMBERSHIP
Click on the map to search the directory