Bloc Billboard: Robin Waart

About

Waart is the first artist to present work as part of the 2020 billboard programme and his work will be installed on our billboard located alongside the gallery on Eyre Lane.

Why do we watch movies? Why do we read books? To run away from the everyday, shield ourselves from overwhelming experiences, private and political drama? That is to say, as a form of escapism, amusement, fun? Or, the opposite: is it more useful to think of these arts as cathartic, Aristotelian immersions into types of theater that allow us to make sense of what is happening in the world around us, holding, as it were, “the mirror up to nature”?

For the Bloc Billboard Commission, Robin Waart will be presenting an iteration of his work Evol/Love.

Evol – the word Love read backwards with the sound of its antonym: evil – is a project in three parts by Waart: a sound installation, new publication, and a billboard series that connects 160 subtitles in the subcategory ‘Love’ from the film still archive he has been amassing since 2007 – arranged in alphabetical order, from 'Love is where you find it' (A: A Date with Judy, US 1948) to 'But even if it’s a little late, love has a way of coming back to you' (Y: Yeonae/Love is a Crazy Thing, KR 2005).

For the Billboard's launch on Friday 28 February, Waart will present an artist reading to coincide with the opening of the Bloc Projects Members Show 2020. Prior to this iteration, an Evol/Love billboard can also be seen at Fluc in Vienna, where the text opens on Wednesday 12 February before continuing at Bloc Projects.

Robin Waart uses repetition and collecting as a framework for projects with books, movie stills, photography, polaroids, and pages. His work raises questions about (dis)continuity and what it means to look at, or do the same thing over and over. Recent exhibitions include A sense of things to come, Bradwolff Projects, Amsterdam, Dedication(s), De Appel, Amsterdam, SKORPION, White Dwarf Projects, Vienna, and Gerrit turns 50, Willem only 28, Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam. Waart’s practice is currently supported by the Mondriaan Fund.