16 October - 28 November 2010
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| © Joep van Liefland
Untitled (Vid.-X), 2009
silkscreen on canvas
150 x 270 cm |
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JOEP VAN LIEFLAND
"Black Systems" - Extended Version
16 October - 28 November
Opening: Friday October 15, from 5 to 7 p.m.
For over a decade, Van Liefland has collected video tapes in all and
every genre, from home video’s to failed Hollywood productions, from
educational films to porn movies. Much of the gallery space in Stedelijk
Museum Bureau Amsterdam is occupied by Van Liefland’s still extending
collection of video tapes, alongside which he presents other analogue
‘black systems’: TV monitors, video recorders, film tapes and remote
controls, both physically present and reproduced on paper and canvas.
Van Liefland shared his ongoing fascination in video tape, VHS-tape in
particular, with an audience before. In Berlin, for example, where Van
Liefland lives and works, he turned an old garage into a video store in
2002. From this Video Palace the artist has been loaning tapes from his
quirky collection of videos, next to his self made videos. Video Palace
continuously developed through dozens of variations, ‘Black Systems -
Extended Version’ in SMBA being the latest version.
For Van Liefland, his collection policy is a means of exploring the
lower segments of the culture industry and with this, that which is
discarded and forgotten. The content of his video collection is a
metaphor for the redundant media it consists of. In the digital age,
which inundates us with a ceaseless flow of the latest media storage
systems, equipment and image formats, the analogue video tape is nothing
but a relic. Even its successor, the DVD, is threatened with
extinction. The decline and disappearance of once cutting-edge media is a
prime concern in Van Liefland’s work.
When a medium like VHS tape disappears, its distribution channels vanish
along with it, as does the architecture around it, the video store, and
its related social system. In this sense, the work also deals with
absence– in brief, the death of the analogue age in all its guises. On
the other hand, this exhibition also calls a temporary halt to the rapid
aging of modernity.
Another example offers Van Liefland’s film Donald Judd Faces of Death
(2008). This film, which draws its title from the 1980 video series
Faces of Death that depicts realistic death scenes, only shows the tapes
of the six video’s the series consist of. Without the original content
the emphasis shifts from the image of the ephemeral to the presence of
the material. In ‘Black Systems – Extended Version’ Van Liefland’s media
archaeological approach does not lead to an apparition, a trail of
death, but to a physical residue, a presence of the analogue empire and
its media artefacts that Van Liefland cherishes, manages and stores and
which he transforms into topical and unique work.
The work of Joep van Liefland (Utrecht, NL,1966) is exhibited regularly
at AMP-Gallery, Athens; Galerie Gebr. Lehmann, Berlin/Dresden and
Galerie Parisa Kind, Frankfurt and, solo, at Frieze Art Fair 2009 and
Art Basel 2010, and elsewhere. Van Liefland also runs Autocenter, a
non-profit artist-led space in Berlin.
The exhibition in SMBA is accompanied by the SMBA Newsletter No. 118 (NL/EN) featuring an essay written by Sven Lütticken.
www.smba.nl |
