Germaine Kruip – A Room, 4 Minutes

In her work, artist Germaine Kruip brings out tensions between formal abstraction and lyrical spiritualism. With a background in theatre set design, Kruip examines techniques of staging such as light, sound, duration, and isolation. With a predilection for ephemeral objects such as sound or fleeting experiences of time, she decided to use the fixed element of the light box, used throughout the In Light Of 25 Years program, not as a carrier for imagery and representation but to turn it into a performative agent.

Using time and space as her material, Kruip creates a choreography of light and sound which repeats itself endlessly. Outside of the exhibition space is a clock which counts down from four minutes to zero; inside, another clock counts upwards from zero to four. The counting up and down is activated by the sound of hands clapping. This single clap of two hands reminds us of the clapperboard used in cinema. Once the clap is heard, the action begins. The light goes on, then out again.

A Room, 4 Minutes not only hints towards Kruip’s previous work A Room, 24 Hours, but is also a tribute to the work of David Lamelas (Argentina, 1946) who in 1997 had his very first retrospective exhibition in Europe at Witte de With. Kruip’s new work is inspired by Lamelas’ pieces such as Time as Activity (1969) which showed four minutes of recorded city scenery, shot at three different locations but shown in one exhibition space; or Two Modified Spaces (1967) in which the artist modified the exhibition space, creating a stage within a stage by use of light and wooden cubical frames.

With A Room, 4 Minutes, Kruip, much like Lamelas, urges the spectator to become aware of the room they are in, the space they occupy, and the time they spend there.

In Light Of 25 Years

Presented as part of In Light Of 25 Years, this project celebrates Witte de With’s 25th anniversary. For In Light Of 25 Years, ten artists and curators each create an image-based work that analyzes certain sediments of contemporary art history, departing from Witte de With’s archive.