Street: behind the cliché

Robin Rhode, The Storyteller, 2006 Video still, 16mm film transferred to DVD, duration: 13 mins Courtesy of the artist and Perry Rubenstein Gallery, New York

Pieterjan Ginckels, The Truth, Part One, 2006 Photo: Miguel Steel Lebre, Leuven Courtesy Galerie de Expeditie, Amsterdam

Chloe Piene, The Dwarf, 2004 Video still, duration: 1 min 20s Courtesy Galerie Obadia, Paris

Witte de With is pleased to present the thematic group exhibitionStreet: behind the cliché. Open from 9 September until 19 November 2006, it features work in a range of media by 28 international artists.

In a city, the street can serve many purposes: it can be a sidewalk where a mass of people meet and pass each other on a daily basis; an infrastructure through which people move from A to B; an ideal space for consumerism to reach a broad audience. Today’s city streets can be thought of as post-public spaces, intimately interwoven with market mechanisms and forcefully, politically designed. ‘The street’ that used to be a synonym for ‘public space’ has now become highly regulated, ordered and controlled.

Not so long ago, Johan Remkes (Dutch State Secretary) pointed out in a governmental memorandum titled A Design Strategy for the Netherlands that we all need to strive for a ‘clean’, ‘safe’ and ‘intact’ public space. To think of the street as the ideal location on which the many-faceted, cultural life of the metropolis is shown now seems outdated, but still phrases such as street art and street culture are forever being used by numerous art institutions, generally funded with public money. The time is ripe for a reconsideration of how public space operates, especially in the Netherlands, where the notion is a perennially popular topic of discussion.

Nowadays it is rare to encounter critical reflections on aesthetic representation that do not involve the concept of space, whether its a social, emotional, institutional or economic space. Street: behind the cliché considers the particular section of public space called the street as a local theater, a stage on which the complex stratification of cultural codes is acted out and identity is formed. The exhibition therefore functions as an analysis of the interrelated phenomena that we encounter in our immediate surroundings, such as the fraught relationship between popular culture and sub-cultural identity, how ‘underground’ is now big business.

In the works included in the exhibition, twenty-eight artists express a varied fascination with city planning, failing modernity and its utopias, social and economic pressure, and the anonymity of everyday life and its worn-out routine. They dissect, analyze and redefine these phenomena to invite us to rethink contemporary society’s existing symbols of iconoclasm and idolatry, causing us to look behind the clichés that we encounter in the stream of life.

Artists: Joachim Baan (NL), David Blandy (UK), Henning Bohl (DE), Martin Boyce (UK), Tobias Buche (DE), Jason Dodge (US), Marius Engh (NO), Gardar Eide Einarsson (NO), Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard (UK), Isa Genzken (DE), Pieterjan Ginckels (BE), Sascha Hahn (DE), Laura Horelli (FIN), Pieter Hugo (ZA), Ian Kiaer (UK), Germaine Kruip (NL), Klara Liden (SE), Gareth Moore (CA), Alex Morrison (CA), Chloe Piene (US), Robin Rhode (ZA), Ugo Rondinone (CH), Matt Stokes (UK), Aram Tanis (NL), An Te Liu (CA), Luc Tuymans (BE), Silke Wagner (DE), and Tobias Zielony (DE).

Curators: Renske Janssen and Nicolaus Schafhausen.

Events accompanying the exhibition

Thursday 9 Nov
7:30 p.m. Artist’s talk
Matt Stokes (b. 1973), is a Newcastle-based artist and winner of the 2006 Becks Futures Prize. Interested in popular and particularly music culture, he is best known for his video Long After Tonight (2005) documenting the vibrant nostalgia of a 1960s Northern Soul venue. Stokes will be in conversation with Nicolaus Schafhausen at Witte de With prior to his performance Sacred Selections.
Language: English
9:00 p.m. Sacred Selections, a pipe organ recital featuring experimental transcriptions of underground music in St. Laurens Church, by Matt Stokes. Grotekerkplein 15, Rotterdam (nearest metro station: Blaak).
Entry €3.50
The ticket to the performance gives one free entry to Witte de With and an exhibition ticket from Street gives free entry to the performance.

Thursday 16 Nov
5 p.m. Finissage of Street at Witte de With
5:30 p.m. Bus to De Appel, Amsterdam
12:30 a.m. Return bus to Rotterdam

As the exhibition draws to a close, we present a special evening with a short tour by curator Renske Janssen. Following this, we offer the chance to travel to Amsterdam by karaoke bus for the opening of De Appel’s exhibition If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution.
During the journey, Canadian artist Gareth Moore will talk about his month-long stay in Rotterdam and the work he created for the Streetexhibition.
Please contact info@wdw.nl to reserve a place on the special karaoke bus.

With special thanks to:
Mondriaan Foundation, Amsterdam, Het Beeldgebouw, Rotterdam, September in Rotterdam.
With support from the British Council.