Shift

Press Release

April 22 - June 18 1995

De Appel Foundation - Nieuwe Spiegelstraat 10 - NL-1017 DE Amsterdam

The exhibition will be opened by Heer Tijmen van Grootheest, of the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science on Friday, April 21 1995, 6 p.m. - 8 p.m.

Opening Hours: Tuesday to Sunday, 12 a.m. - 5 p.m.

The participants of the Curatorial Training Programme 1994-1995 (Els van den Berg, NL; Jan Floorizoone, B; Sjoukje van der Meulen, NL; Åsa Nacking, SE; Pia Viewing, F; Jan Winkelmann, D), held in De Appel Foundation, Amsterdam are the organisers of the exhibition Shift. This course, the first of its kind in Northern Europe, is an initiative of De Appel. Shift is the final stage of this course.

Shift is an exhibition that aims to show a change that has taken place - not a drastic one, but one that is almost incidental, unobtrusive; it is an attempt to change direction. A change in presentation is needed because this art shows new relations with reality, with experiences, images and objects that one is confronted with every day.

Fourteen artists, from Holland and abroad, are taking part in this exhibition. They all use unusual materials and present their work in a spontaneous manner, making an immediate appeal to their public. Viewers will recognise themselves in these events and will feel invited to participate, as they saunter through the building full of images, sounds, smells. The exhibition space is conceived of as undefined and flexible - there is no longer any hierarchy of above and below, front and back, of corridors, rooms, staircases and toilets.

Artists
Jacqueline Donachie (1969), GB; Douglas Gordon (1966), GB; Gregory Green (1959), USA; Noritoshi Hirakawa (1960), JPN; Pierre Huyghe (1962), F; Fabrice Hybert (1961), F; Job Koelewijn (1962), NL; Maria Lindberg (1958), SE; Rob Schröder (1950), NL; Roman Signer (1938), CH; Ross Sinclair (1966), GB; Rirkrit Tiravanija (1961), T; Elin Wikström (1965), SE; Peter Zimmermann (1956), D.

Events that will take place at the opening and during the exhibition.
At the opening three events will take place. Roman Signer will stand on a wooden crate; an explosion will occur and the crate will collapse producing a desired effect. Ross Sinclair has constructed his Studio Real Life in De Appel. He will sit at his computer and work with it, get up, play on his guitar, sing praises to other works in the show and paint T-shirts. This performance represents the general activity of Ross Sinclair in De Appel during Shift. Elin Wikström will also be present in De Appel every day. On the opening evening - and throughout the exhibition - she will try on, and parade in, various outfits from Amsterdam's department stores.

Indoors
On entering De Appel during Shift, visitors will be overwhelmed by a work of Job Koelewijn on the doors. The fresh and lively attitude of his work is typical of Shift. The visitor will then be bombarded with questions via Jaqueline Donachie's audio installations. People greeting each other can sometimes be a very special event, one that is spontaneous and emotional; all too often however it is an everyday automatic token gesture. Douglas Gordon uses kissing as a form of greeting between people as a leitmotiv in his kissing piece. Similar to other works in Shift, Maria Lindberg also aims at bringing every day life into the art institution. In her drawings everyday experiences can frequently be discerned. Sometimes she uses pure text, such as fragments of conversations that she overhears between people in her vicinity.

Outdoors
Fabrice Hybert will sell various products - from caps to gardening tools - at his Hybertmarché, a market stall that he has set up in the Nieuwe Spiegelstraat. He aims to give the art-viewing public a positive economic stimulus with this event. Perhaps a different sector of the public will be attracted to the art world as a result. Pierre Huyghe has made photos on three sites in Amsterdam. From April 24 to May 22 these photos will be shown on large billboards situated on the sites where the photos were taken. In this way Huyghe draws our attention to ordinary street scenes. He will then show posters of them in the exhibition space when the billboard images are no longer visible in public space.

Catalogue
A catalogue (200 pages) will be published to accompany the exhibition (ISBN 90 73501 22 9). It is composed of introductory articles, interviews, essays about the artists, short biographies, texts and images by the artists themselves. The design and layout of the catalogue has been done by Joseph Plateau designers' collective.

Interviews
Most of the artists will be present during the mounting of Shift and the opening. If you are interested in interviewing one or more of the artists, please contact the people mentioned below

Information and/or photos
For further information and/or photos, please contact Pia Viewing or Edna van Duyn at the following phone and fax numbers

De Appel Foundation
Nieuwe Spiegelstraat 10
NL - 1017 DE Amsterdam
tel. +31 - 20 - 625 56 51
fax. +31 - 20 - 655 51 15

German version

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