You're so Beautiful,
and so on....and so on....and so on...
Bas van den Hurk & Harm van den Dorpel
14th May - 11th June, 2011
Private View: 12th May, 6.30 - 9.30 pm
Rod Barton Gallery, London EC1
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Rod Barton is delighted to
present a collaborative installation by two young Dutch artists; Bas
van den Hurk and Harm van den Dorpel.
They combine and manipulate multiple spatial co-ordinates through
different mediums in a given context, in this case an exhibition
room. In an era where the potential to make new remarkable gestures
seems exhausted, they instead productively research discursive
networks, modes and models of painting and virtual reproduction.
Harm van den Dorpel investigates how intentional concept and
expressive intuition, software and matter, complement rather
than conflict. He works in a wide range of media: collages, installation,
websites and animation.
He aims to reinvent aesthetic strategies found in (modernist)
art history by confronting these with contemporary languages
from the worlds of graphics, media and interaction design, often
using synthetic materials and self-developed online information
systems.
Van den Dorpel's practice is structured around acts of publishing
- online or in a space - by positing objects as documents into
a networked model. His often computer generated, speculative
art explores how algorithmically constructed and distributed
reality has given rise to a new urgency and understanding of
the human relationship with material objects.
Harm van den Dorpel's work has been shown in The New Museum,
NYC; Museum of Contemporary Art, Rome; Art Since '69, NYC; W139,
Amsterdam and The Dutch Institute for Media Arts, Amsterdam.
His practice as an artist involves curating and teaching at the
Art Academy of Amsterdam.
Bas van den Hurk’s practice circles
around questions of the possibilities of painting today. For
him painting functions in a permanent tension that on the one
hand strives for radical autonomy and on the other is aware
of the fact that it is part of a network of texts, modes of
production and commodifications.
On the autonomous side Bas van den Hurk’s works are defined by the argument
that image-based and abstract contemporary painting has reached the end of
its 'logical conclusion', where images and abstractions can no longer support
any meaning, whereas on the contextual side they show an awareness of the (art)
historical and social contexts in which these works are produced and function.
Van den Hurk treats his works as permanently unfinished. By doing so his works
often look fragile and vulnerable. He exhibits them as site-specific installations
and temporary events that question not only the value of the individual pieces
and their combinations, but also their relation towards the (exhibition) space,
the spectator and their modes of production.
Bas van den Hurk’s exhibitions include; solo shows at
Rod Barton Gallery, London and ZINGERpresents, Amsterdam and
presentations at Liste 15, Basel and Paul Andriesse Galleries,
Amsterdam. This April his new book was presented at the Museum
de Pont, Tilburg. Van den Hurk occasionally curates and he teaches
contemporary theory at the MFA AKV/st. Joost.
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Bas van den Hurk & Harm van den Dorpel,
Installation view
Harm van den Dorpel, On Usability, 2011, 35 x 25 cm
Bas van den Hurk & Harm van den Dorpel,
Untitled, 2011, 160 x 107 x 53 cm
Harm van den Dorpel, Untitled, 2011, 101 x 71
cm
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