Next Level
Anne de Vries – E _ M E R G E
28 August–1 November 2015
foam
Keizersgracht 609
1017 DS Amsterdam
Hours: Saturday–Wednesday 10am–6pm,
Thursday–Friday 10am–9pm
T +31 0 20 5516500
Foam Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam presents the first major solo exhibition of visual artist Anne de Vries (b. 1977, The Hague), in which existing and new work are combined.
Critical Mass: Pure Immanence
The exhibition starts with the new video Critical Mass: Pure Immanence. This work, specially made for this occasion, is inspired by the last essay by French philosopher Gilles Deleuze—Life: Pure Immanence (1995), a text that articulates the ultimate integration between all elements and oppositions, presented within the form and limitations of dance music. It resonates with the recurring sentiment in electronic dance music that calls for unity, altered states of consciousness, and experience beyond society’s divisions.
The starting point for this body of work is the combination of abstract notions of “new materialism” with the everyday, common objects and with new technologies, materials and printing techniques. His oeuvre ranges from two-dimensional digital photography and three-dimensional photo sculptures to new media installations. In its content, De Vries’ work is based on the influence of technologies on our perception and experience of the world, and the resulting social and political implications. As De Vries puts it: “What interests me is how digital technologies are ultimately rooted in the human need to overcome physical and mental limitations. This is an ancient quest in which science, art and the spiritual are bound up together, a quest that has produced the manipulated reality of our day and of the future.”
The exhibition is a reflection on the appeal of progress, the position of the individual among the masses and the roll of imaging in an increasingly globalised economy.
Anne de Vries
Anne de Vries grew up in a time in which the Internet, Photoshop, Tumblr and mobile upload feeds came to seem entirely natural. He embraces the fluid, dynamic world that exists in the computer and the new world facilitated by it, deploying photography as an important part of a far broader artistic practice in which a diversity of materials, techniques and methods are brought together. De Vries’ visual language is strongly influenced by corporate branding, commercial visual merchandising and stock photography.
Anne de Vries has participated in numerous international group exhibitions, including the Mambo Museum, Bologna, Museum Angewandte Kunst, Frankfurt am Main, Museum De Hallen, Haarlem, Netherlands, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis, USA, The Moving Museum, Istanbul and foam. His work is included in several private and corporate collections, as well as those of Rhizome, New York, Museum Winterthur, Switzerland and Foam. De Vries was a resident at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten from 2011–12. He studied at the Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam and at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, New York. Anne de Vries is represented by Galerie Martin Zomeren in Amsterdam.
Next Level
E _ M E R G E is the first exhibition Foam is organizing in the Next Level exhibition series with support from Ammodo. This series aims to introduce a broad public to the innovative art of relatively young image-makers who take a revolutionary approach to the medium of photography. Anne de Vries is the first selected artist in this series that will present one solo exhibition a year for four years.
