Art Rotterdam, February 7 – 10, 2019
Laurence Aëgerter, 2310-1710201033 (Saverij), 2017, ultrachrome print, 130 x 80 cm, edition 5 + 2 AP
Main section: solo presentation by Laurence Aëgerter
The gallery will present three recent projects by Laurence Aëgerter (FR, 1972). Her extensive oeuvre comprises of photographic series, artist’s books, multiples, site-specific installations, textile works, and community projects. Aëgerter makes inventive use of archives and existing images from illustrated books to museum collections, in a transcultural and transhistorical practice reflecting on the meaning of the image in relation to identity and collective memory.
In recent years she shifted her focus to the fragile edges of the human mind and applied her playful appropriation of images in collaborative projects involving, among others, patients dealing with mental health issues, neurologists, psychiatrists, and psychologists.
Three recent projects, Colorfield Phaedra (2014-2018) which was never shown before, Photographic Treatment © (2017-2018) and Compositions catalytiques (2017) deal with the potential of people struggling with illnesses such as dementia or psychosis and appeal to the use of their imagination, their power of calling up associations, and free interpretation. The resulting art works are both result from collaborations with patients and their attendants as well as reflective of the healing power of photography and other visual art forms.
Projections: video of Antoinette Nausikaä
At Projections, the video Tomorrow Flows Into Yesterday by Antoinette Nausikaä will be shown. It reflects Nausikaä’s personal quest for the unchangeable and is composed of her observations that were shot during a five-year journey in which she went looking for stillness along eight sacred mountains in Europe and Asia. She combines seemingly ordinary situations and scenes, revealing how humans and nature are casually intertwining. Thus Nausikaä explores and analyzes the relations between man, nature and time – the eternal and the transient, the sacred and the mundane.
Antoinette Nausikaä, Tomorrow Flows Into Yesterday, 2019, HD video, duration 6 minutes, with sound and subtitles.
Five years ago, Antoinette Nausikaä decided she wanted to observe mountains. In the middle of her frantic urban life she developed a need for stillness and solitude, and was convinced that mountains were the place to go. After all, throughout the centuries they have always been a refuge for man and an archetype for stability, calmness and tranquility. Concepts that seem so far removed from our modern everyday lives.
Soon however, she discovered that ‘pure’ silence and solitude were nowhere to be found. Looking for the timeless spirit of the mountains, she found fleeting traces of human existence everywhere and, almost casually, her project turned into an exploration of one of the most pressing philosophical themes of this moment: the Anthropocene.
The video work is part of the project Breathing Mountains, – a five-year quest for silence and balance between man and nature during which Nausikaä lived and worked around mount Fuji (JP), mount Olympus (GR), mount Ararat (TR), and the five great mountains of China, The Wuyué. Breathing Mountains resulted in the eponymous publication in 2018 (published by Art Paper Editions in Ghent), an exhibition at Gallery Caroline O’Breen and this video.
Art Rotterdam is taking place in the Van Nellefabriek in Rotterdam.