Voorwerk 2

Voorwerk 2 was the second exhibition in the yearly recurrent series. Voorwerk, meaning preliminary work, is Witte de With’s annual exhibition of younger artists. As a series, it seeks to provide the first substantial presentation of works by relatively unknown artists.

Voorwerk 2 presented works by German artist Maria Anna Dewes (1955), American artist Brandt Junceau (1959), Dutch artist Rob Kaptein (1961) and Swiss artist Guido Schmidt (1959).

Within the art world’s tendency to formulate relationships, Voorwerk is a peripheral event, captivating because of the heterogeneous character of the work. There are no common denominators or themes in these exhibitions, rather the artists’ works and ideas are left open for comparison. To date, the rest of the series includes Voorwerk 1 (in 1990), Voorwerk 3 (in 1992), Voorwerk 4 (in 1995) and Voorwerk 5 (in 1996).

Jeff Wall’s Destroyed Room (1978) was a point of reference for this exhibition. The work depicts a girl’s bedroom, where life has turned ugly and havoc rules. Furniture and clothes are scattered around. Though the image radiates a fascinating mix of aggression and intimacy, it is its aesthetic pleasure that prevails. The works of the artists in Voorwerk 2also dealt with the home, with people and their objects, with intimacy and aggression, and with order and chaos.

Maria Anna Dewes created life-size plaster casts of people. Her installation included five red casts of sweeping women, portraying typical female labor, while simultaneously evoking in their suggestion of filmic movement Eadweard Muybridge’s cinematographic motion studies.

Brandt Junceau combined his varied works into a single installation. He arranged a narrative presentation that often took autobiographical turns.

The sculptures Rob Kaptein showed referred to living and working environments. He deconstructed cupboards, chairs, desks and cushions, assembling and integrating them into sculptures of great accuracy, refinement and humor.

Guido Schmidt presented monumental sculptures, assembled from such found objects and debris as discarded cigarette boxes or vacuum-cleaner parts. His large robot or targets, made of domestic waste, commented on our consumer society’s endless production of waste. Brandt Junceau’s work was subsequently more extensively explored in the solo exhibition Hyde Park (in 1995).