From 28 June to 25 August, TENT will present the final presentations of the Master Fine Art and the Master Media Design and Communication of the Piet Zwart Institute, the post-academic institute of the Willem de Kooning Academy. The graduation works of Fine Art, led by Vivian Sky Rehberg and with the cooperation of curator Arnisa Zeqo and Media Design and Communication, led by British director Simon Pummell and with the cooperation of Willie Stehouwer, can be seen in one overview.
Nothing could be slow enough, nothing last too long – Master Fine Art
Compiled by Arnisa Zeqo
Nothing could be slow enough, nothing last too long brings together the work of eight artists, each with a different geographical background and a different artistic context. For two years, these artists shared their studios, their ideas and the development of their work every day during their participation in the Master of Fine Art at the Piet Zwart Institute. The title of the exhibition is taken from Virginia Woolf's 1925 novel Mrs Dalloway and refers to the special way in which time is experienced during an art education and at the same time to the revived interest in time in relation to art and life itself.
Virginia Woolf alluded to the contradictions inherent in the experience and perception of time. Our experience of time is rarely in line with the linear progression of time as we see reflected in calendars, clocks or stock exchange time. For example, the memory of a certain event by a random person can emotionally span a longer or shorter time span than the officially recorded time. While the present and the everyday pass by tirelessly, changes in time are felt and experienced by our bodies and ourselves according to a geography more focused on duration. The personal experience of the temporary relationships between objects and events often prompts us to reflect on our own life course, but also to question a broader framework in which the emphasis lies on art, politics, technology, society and history. That which both crosses the past and is laden with a future forms a kind of landscape that moves forward in the materiality of things. If we assume that the shared temporal framework of an MFA program casually connects the various works of the artists created for this exhibition, an interest in the convergence of the subjective experience of time with historical events and changes will also be evident. The works on display move within that which always manages to escape in a mystical way and often seems illogical. A sense of absurdity and playfulness resounds regularly. Yet this is not a symptom of detachment or letting go, but rather of a desire to reposition oneself (or the personal and the body) in the midst of the temporality of the world. The works assume a mysterious opening in the fabric of time, but at the same time are firmly anchored in the contemporary.
Jasper Griepink won the Piet Zwart Institute Fine Arts Jury Promotion Prize.
News from Nowhere – Master Media Design and Communication
Text: Simon Pummell
Compiled by Willie Stehouwer
News from Nowhere brings together the work of fourteen artists, each with a different geographical background and a different artistic context. For two years, these artists followed the Master of Media Design and Communication at the Piet Zwart Institute, where they studied and conducted research together. News from Nowhere: the title of the exhibition is borrowed from the classic novel of the same name written by artist, designer and socialist pioneer William Morris. In this novel, utopian socialism and science fiction come together when the main character falls asleep after a meeting of (the British socialist organisation) The Socialist League, only to wake up in a future world. Here he finds himself in a society where the principles are based on common ownership and open and democratic control over the means of production of society. These themes and strategies are often echoed in the research done by the artists in this exhibition: in both form and content, the works on display separately explore the politics of decision-making, our political relationship to images and the information flows around us, as well as our subjective relationship to our own history. In addition, the works bring together issues from different areas and subjects, such as popular culture, political theory, spam email, feminist consent, family scrapbooks and archives. It is precisely this linking of diverse forms and codes that forms the common thread of the research within the department.