fotografie - beeldende kunst - 2018
De tentoonstelling 'Dell'Uomo' met werk van Marinus Boezem in het Gorky Park Museum Moskou
Tentoonstelling 'Dell'Uomo'
Marinus Boezem (Leerdam (NL), 1934) is one of the founding fathers of Dutch conceptual art and ‘Arte Povera’, the name given to a group of young artists who made installations out of simple or ‘poor’ materials in the 1960s and 1970s. His multidisciplinary work reaches far beyond the boundaries of the gallery and is often made out of elusive elements such as air, wind, light and space. It offers a fascinating exploration of the perennial tension between flight and fall, appearance and disappearance, presence and absence, nature and culture. For the exhibition at Gorky Park Museum, Boezem has created vibrant new work in dialogue with the museum’s impressive architecture. Earlier work has been adapted to the site’s specific challenges. The result is both witty and unsettling.
Dell’Uomo (‘About man’), the title of Boezem’s first solo exhibition in Russia, refers to his interest in man’s complex relationship with his surroundings. Early on in his career Boezem embarked on an examination of our need for control by categorizing, schematizing, labeling, appropriating, mapping and dividing up the world. His artworks often take the shape of descriptions, depictions, charts and maps of the earth, the oceans, the weather and even outer space. Ironically, man’s quest for control has yielded and is yielding still increasing political, socio-cultural, environmental and economic complexity.
The works exhibited in Dell’Uomo reveal how ‘things’ refuse to fit categories. They elude the fabric of our understanding, and have agency, an agenda and point of view all of their own, characteristics traditionally considered the exclusive privilege of humans. The exhibition creates a space for what refuses to be caught in categories and demonstrates the inadequacies of contemporary ways of knowing. With its strive for total appropriation Gorky Park Museum’s architecture offers the ideal setting for Boezem’s work on the doorstep of Russia’s most famous park, in which culture and nature come together.