 © Anouk de Clercq Wunderland Unframed Anouk de Clercq in collaboration with Joris Cool and Eavesdropper, Govinda Mens, Barbara Visser It's become something of an annual tradition for a young, up-and-coming curator to be invited to present a show at Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam during the summer months. This year it is the turn of Andrea Wiarda. Wiarda, who studied in Amsterdam, is currently working in Milan as a freelance exhibition maker and critic. In the past she was curator of the Looking Glass exhibition space in Brussels, editor of the Belgian art magazine "A Prior" and organizer of exhibitions in Liège and Tielt. In the exhibition Wiarda has put together for SMBA, "Wunderland unframed", the Flemish ad hoc collective of Anouk De Clercq, Joris Cool and Eavesdropper, and Dutch artist Govinda Mens cast an eye over the marvellous mental landscape of understanding, memory and imagination. In "Wunderland unframed" the focus is on the confrontation and cross-fertilization between different disciplines. A combination of modes of expression is characteristic not only of the work of the artists in this exhibition, but also of the attitude of an entire generation of young Flemish, Dutch and international artists. The "Wunderland unframed" exhibition consists of environments and a monumental video work in which the artists remove images from their visual framework, display them anew or merely suggest ... undressed ... unframed. In a separate contribution, Barbara Visser reinvokes the visual exhibition history of Bureau Amsterdam. In "Jan who saw it all", she questions Jan Meijer, who has worked at SMBA for ten years, about his visual impressions of the many dozens of exhibitions and projects that have taken place at Bureau Amsterdam. Jan who saw it all takes the form of a limited edition artist's book. Meijer's reinterpretation of Bureau Amsterdam's exhibition history is an integral part of the SMBA's anniversary book "We Show Art". This special publication is available from SMBA, Artimo and the Annet Gelink Gallery. Guest curator: Andrea Wiarda SMBA Newsletter No. 81, with an essay by Andrea Wiarda, will be published to coincide with the exhibition. The Wunderland unframed exhibition was made possible in part by the Amsterdam Fund for the Arts and the Ministry of the Flemish Community. Exhibition: 17 July - 29 August 2004 Opening hours: Tue-Sun 11 am - 5 pm Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam Rozenstraat 59 NL-Amsterdam, 1016 NN Telephone +31 (0)20 422 04 71 Fax +31 (0)20 626 17 30 Email mail@smba.nl www.smba.nl |
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