Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow

About

Exhibition: 22 April - 28 May 2011
Exhibition open: Wed - Sat / 12 - 6 pm and by appointment
Film screenings: Wed - Sat / 6:30 - 8:00 pm

Entire strata of the population have been
living for a considerable period in an inner
somewhere-else. They do not feel bound to
what are called the fundamental values of
society (Peter Sloterdijk, in The Critique of
Cynical Reason)

Our understanding of the words spoken by Lilith when Adam expulsed her from Paradise, evokes a remarkable twist: Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow once meant to be an apocalyptic threat, can also be interpreted nowadays as an Arcadian prediction. In this scene from the Old Testament we can already discern the three components of a most dynamic triangle in the history of art to the present: Lilith (the individual), Paradise (nature) and the city (the collective).

Changing attitudes and ideals determine the relationship between nature, the individual and the collective. This triangle is slowly assembled and rearranged by the works in this exhibition, beginning with works by G.B. Piranesi, the exhibition acknowledges the romantic vision of cities and landscapes.

This movement traces a reversal of power between the viewer and the object: the environment is no longer subject to the power of the human gaze. Instead we find that the surroundings ' be it landscape, city or matter exert a substantial influence over the viewer.

The impact becomes visible when we remember one of the most famous paintings of the Romantic period, Caspar David Friedrich's Wanderer above a Sea of Fog (1818). In Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow we can observe how the quietly reflective pose of the wanderer starts moving, gently jumps into the landscape below and looks back to us from behind this scene.

…A choir of singing men jumping off a building into the air; the hidden space between two walls is forced open to reveal secretive mental processes; clouds of fog lead us into a realm of intense psychological landscapes; a walk from A to B is transposed into a momento of human contact; a stone, found by chance in the night, connects two people; bricks sprinkled with glitter embody a jumble of earthly and otherworldly forces; a medium standing before an ancient house mediates its story to the viewer, eyes stare at us from hiding places in the walls; and our own reflection is dissolved and scattered by mirrors…

Works by:
Lara Almarcegui (Ellen de Bruijne Projects, Amsterdam), Stanley Brouwn, Thomas Grunfeld (Hidde van Seggelen, London, Private collection, The Hague), Ann Veronica Janssens (Galerie Micheline Szwajcer, Antwerp), Suchan Kinoshita (Ellen de Bruijne Projects, Amsterdam, Nadja Vilenne, Liege), Pieter Laurens Mol (Hidde van Seggelen Gallery, London), Ciprian Muresan (Galeria Plan B, Cluj, Prometeo Gallery, Milano, Wilkinson Gallery, London), Olaf Nicolai (Eigen + Art, Berlin) G.B. Piranesi (Buch ' & Kunstantiquariat Hans Marcus, Dusseldorf).

Film programme with works by:
Bas Jan Ader, Hans Op De Beeck (Galleria Continua, San Gimignano / Beijing /Le Moulin; Galerie Krinzinger, Vienna; Xavier Hufkens, Brussels; Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York; Galerie Ron Mandos, Amsterdam), Persijn Broersen & Margit Lukacs (AKINCI, Amsterdam), Jesper Just (Gallery Emmanuel Perrotin, Paris), Gregor Schneider (Galerie Konrad Fischer, Dusseldorf).

FIlm screenings Wed - Sat / 6:30 - 8:00 pm