Ballroom Project #3 — 13-16 May, 2021

Galerie Caroline O’Breen will attend the fair with the works of Anne Geene and Antoinette Nausikaä

Antoinette Nausikaä

Antoinette Nausikaä (NL, 1973) creates site-specific investigative projects in places where nature and culture coincide. It is the balance between the two that fascinates her. For her presentation at Balroom Project #3, Nausikaä selected works from her Mountains and Rivers projects and assembled a new installation.

In her installation, Nausikaä plays with the relation between the human abstract and the natural organic, the mundane and the transcendent. She is fascinated by the balance between nature and culture and the thought that nature can be seen as an integral part of our everyday life and ourselves. Golden-glazed Spring equinox figurines were created in her studio in Amsterdam at the time of the last spring equinox on March 20th, 2021 – a kind of a personal ode to the light. Blanc de Chines figurines, the fragile white sculptures, were made on location in the traditional Chinese porcelain town of Dehua, for her project Breathing Mountains. Dehua is known for the production of the famous “Blanc de Chine” which has been produced from the Ming dynasty. Until today Buddhist and Taoist figurines are the most famous products of Blanc de Chine. The photograph Isle, Paris finishes the installation, showing a small scene, resembling an island in the sea, on a chipped wall.

Find out more about the project here

Anne Geene

With the help of photography, Anne Geene (NL, 1983) captures the hidden beauty of the natural world – she investigates, collects and organises it according to a distinct logic. The camera objectively records the materials in which Geene is looking for visual similarities, patterns and phenomena. Her interpretation of the data is strictly personal and refers to our urge to regulate and understand the world around us. Geene’s project presented at Ballroom #3 is a site-specific work, created during her artist in residency in Portugal this year.

The artistic method of the exhibited works lies on the border between scientific and poetic investigation. To make these works, Anne Geene engages in the enduring on-site collecting processes, selecting materials for the project. It can be months of accumulation, scanning and sorting of the plant material. ‘Portrait of a garden’, for instance, consists of plant material collected in a single garden. The works belong to ‘Museum of the Plant’ – a slightly absurd, or even ironic, “museum” that focuses on all aspects of the plants that other museums do not discuss. Coincidence, hierarchy, destiny, social status, ownership, the norm and deviation from it. Does application of the human logic and standards to the plant life benefit to a better understanding of the natural world? Or bring us closer to objectivity? Geene’s interpretation of the collected data is self-evident within her compositions.

Find out more about the project here

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