Melly x Art Central Rotterdam XL 2024

Opening: Friday 2 February 2024, 7 pm – until late
Location: Koopgoot, Beurstraverse 111 & 154, underpass next to the Bijenkorf

The third iteration of Art Central Rotterdam XL is expanding to two showcases this year. The first will unfold in Rotterdam's city center on the weekend days from 2 February to 11, aligning with Rotterdam Art Week. Art Central Rotterdam XL aims to reflect Rotterdam's lively cultural scene by bringing together contemporary art spaces, galleries, and local creative platforms in a curated exhibition.

Curator Marijn Bril: the exhibition is designed to engage visitors with each space's distinctive character while broadening the event's reach to a diverse audience. De GOOT, a new cultural spot located in the city center, will host this presentation across its two spaces at Beurstraverse 154 & Beurstraverse 111.

The Cloud Is The New Infinity

Kunstinstituut Melly presents The Cloud Is The New Infinity (2017) by Canadian artist Douglas Coupland, and artwork that's part of his Slogan for the Twenty-First Century project. Coupland states, “If you were to attach a stick to each of these slogans and carry them in the street, would they read as a protest or would they read as complicit guilt? For example, twenty years from now, were I to look at a picture of someone holding up a slogan reading ‘being middle class was fun’, would that read as heartbreaking prescience or as rational acceptance of a by then sociological certainty?”

An ounce of information is worth a pound of data

Marijn Bril: "Once the financial heart of Rotterdam and now a commercial center, the Beurstraverse is a node in a network. The exhibition builds on this context and examines the economic, transportation, and information systems that converge there. The stock exchange with buyers and sellers, global trade driven by supply and demand, and the Internet with its users, servers, and websites – these interconnected systems are characterized by complexity. Like gears in a machine, the works in the exhibition collectively explore feedback, control, and errors in a time defined by interconnectivity and rapid technological change. Do we control our systems, or do they control us?"

Participating Artists ACR XL

Marco Barbier, Douglas Coupland, Rolf den Dunnen & Saminte Ekeland, Ruud Goedhart, Aletta de Jong, Kamagurka, Alban Karsten, Tom K Kemp, Carlijn Kingma, Sjoerd Knibbeler, Anna Lange, Johannes Langkamp, Sarah van der Lijn, Bas Losekoot, Ruben Mols, Anna Moreno, Jelmer Noordeman, Niels Post, Tonio de Roover, Jan Ros, Alan Smart, Johannes Steendam, Tools for Action, Giuditta Vendrame, Hans Wilschut

Participating Art Spaces ACR XL

Galerie Atelier Herenplaats, Kunstinstituut Melly, Eye Love You Art, Nieuw Charlois, H(a)L Het Archief, Christian Ouwens Galerie, Frank Taal Galerie, Huidenclub, Gallery Untitled, ROOF-A, ZERP Galerie, Studio Seine, PHOEBUS Rotterdam, Contour Gallery, CHAxARTxRTM, JOEY RAMONE, Murals Inc., NL=US Art, WTC Rotterdam Art Gallery, Contempo Galerie, PrintRoom, Neck Of The Woods, Garage Rotterdam, TENT, OMI Rotterdam