Boezem & Co. The City as Stage
11 April–25 May 2015
Various locations in Middelburg
This spring Middelburg is honouring visual artist Marinus Boezem with the manifestation Boezem & Co. The City as Stage, an initiative of SBKM / De Vleeshal.
During his 60-year career, artist Marinus Boezem has created a multifaceted and graceful oeuvre. In the early 1960s he discovered how to employ intangible elements such as the weather and air as expressions of his artistic ideas. He is one of the pioneers of Conceptual art, an art movement in which ideas are more important than their material manifestation. This radical approach gained widespread recognition in 1969 with two high-profile exhibitions: Op Losse Schroeven (Square Pegs in Round Holes: Situations and Cryptostructures) at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and When Attitudes Become Form at the Kunsthalle Bern. Boezem’s work had a prominent place in these exhibitions and remains highly relevant today. Recently the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo has acquired several of his works and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam has purchased his Weather Drawings (1969). Since February of this year the Stedelijk Museum has devoted a gallery specially to Boezem’s work.
Collaboration has always been important to Marinus Boezem’s artistic practice and it will be central to this manifestation, which comprises exhibitions, dance, contemporary music concerts, symposiums and other events in the historical heart of Middelburg. The centre point will be a new installation at De Vleeshal titled The Stendhal Syndrome – In Search of an Archetypal Image of Beauty (2002–2015). Boezem developed this work together with his daughter Natasja Boezem, who will also present two sound works. In addition De Vleeshal will host two performances: an improvisation on the day’s weather report by cellist Frances-Marie Uitti and the first performance of Windtables (1984), in which dancers improvise to music by Morton Feldman. De Vleeshal is also exhibiting the installation Space Sculpture (1980), which has never previously been seen in the Netherlands.
From 1977 to 1987 Marinus Boezem and his wife Maria-Rosa Boezem organised the legendary Forum, which brought internationally renowned artists and theorists like Lawrence Weiner, Ulay Abramovic, Daniel Buren to Middelburg. It is the subject of the documentary exhibition 10 Years of Forum: Explorations of art from beyond the fringe in De Kabinetten van De Vleeshal.
Marinus Boezem has had a longstanding interest in training young artists. During the manifestation Boezem will present the Porsche Academie (1976), a previously unrealised project conceived in response to the artist’s dissatisfaction with existing models of art education. It is an art school without a director and without a building, comprising only seven “professors” with Porsches who can be called upon by students for advice. On 26 April there will be a symposium about the importance of art education on the Podio del Mondo per l’Arte, established in 1975.
Information about the manifestation will soon be available at www.boezem-en-co.nl.
Partners and/or locations: CBK Zeeland / Cinema Middelburg / De Drvkkery / Vriendschap / Gemeente Middelburg / Kloveniersdoelen / Provincie Zeeland / UCR / Zeeuws Archief / Zeeuwse Bibliotheek / Zeeuws Museum
For more information or images, please contact Maaike Ritsema, Marketing and Communications Department: communicatie bc at vleeshal.nl / T +06 2500 7342.
SBKM / De Vleeshal Office: office at vleeshal.nl / T +0118 652200.
Thanks to The Mondriaan Fund, VSBfonds, Fonds 21, Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds.
