Fall 2016 exhibitions

In the Belly of the Whale
September 9–December 31, 2016

Drawing from the biblical story of “Jonah and the Whale”—in which the prophet’s resolve and message is galvanized whilst he meditates within the dark body of the great beast that has swallowed him whole—this exhibition brings together artworks and objects to trace various transformations of meaning, reception, and use over time. In the Belly of the Whale plays content against framing to question both how an artifact references a given historical moment and how different modes and moments of display affect signification. Or, to present these questions in another way: do artworks and artifacts indicate fixed meanings independent of their context, or are they inherently unstable, and tempered by situational and institutional inscription?

Participants: Advancing American Art (1946–47), Minia Biabiany, Tania Bruguera, Broomberg & Chanarin, Mariana Castillo Deball, Jean-Martin Charcot, Paul Ekman, Hamza Halloubi, International Academy of Art Palestine, Emily Jacir, Käthe Kollwitz, Susanne Kriemann, Britta Marakatt-Labba, Pratchaya Phinthong, Jeremy Shaw, Amie Siegel, Van Abbemuseum Eindhoven, and Charles Thomson Rees Wilson. 

For the related conference and exhibition readings by Lars Fischer, Nicoline van Harskamp, Maaike Lauwaert, Aaron Peck, and Aaron Schuster, click here.

WDW25+
Kasper Bosmans: Decorations
September 9–December 31, 2016
Artist talk: Tuesday, October 18, 7pm

As Witte de With confronts its collection of traces from past decades of exhibition-making, the center hosts a series of artistic and curatorial approaches to source materials from institutional and personal archives. The commissions in the series of WDW25+, which started with Bik van der Pol, Marwa Arsanios and Ahmed Bouanani, variously deconstruct and engage with canonical moments in Witte de With’s history and provide a platform for previously unacknowledged cultural histories and figures whose presentation will loop back into and supplement its archive. 

For the next commission, Kasper Bosmans reimagines Witte de With’s exhibition history through a series of new works, including an artist publication, painterly interventions in archival boxes, sculptures and large-scale murals. It also features documents from artist Asger Jorn’s photographic archive “10,000 Years of Nordic Folk Art,” a project part of his Scandinavian Institute for Comparative Vandalism he founded in 1961 as an interdisciplinary institute aimed at “vandalizing” art history.

Para | Fictions
29 January 2016 – 9 April 2017
A two-year long cycle of sustained investigations taking as its focus the relationship between literature and visual art through the practice of nine artists. 

Currently:
Lucy Skaer: One Remove
July 15–October 2 2016

Upcoming:
Mark Geffriaud: two thousand fifteen
October 14, 2016–January 15, 2017

WdW Review
Desks with contributions from Athens (James Bridle), Moscow (Natalia Antonova), Berlin (Ana Teixeira Pinto), Mexico City (Gabriela Jauregui), London (Ben Eastham), and Delhi/Calcutta (Ruchir Joshi). A series of political cartoons about the US elections by Stephen Crowe is complemented by textual analysis of the images of our political lives (see Patrick Goddard on a video from the UK parliament and Ana Teixeira Pinto on a 1975 cover of Time magazine and the current situation in Portugal). For Sediments, a series of essays about the future, see Evan Calder Williams, Natalie Kane, Patrick Langley, and a project by Julia Weist and Stefan Keidel.

Director: Defne Ayas
Curators: Natasha Hoare, Adam Kleinman, Samuel Saelemakers, Marie Egger (Curatorial Fellow 2016)

WDW25+ is in part supported by J.E. Jurriaanse Stichting and the G. Ph. Verhagen-Foundation. Decorations is supported by the Flemish government. With special thanks to the Museum Jorn, Silkeborg, Denmark. One Remove is supported by AMMODO and Peter Freeman, Inc. two thousand fifteen is supported by AMMODO and Institut français des Pays-Bas.

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