On Mobility
15 July – 27 August 2006
www.deappel.nl
What better
place to be writing a review of an exhibition that takes the art world’s
internationalisation as a starting point than at Schipol airport, on my way
to collect an artwork from Basel? ‘On Mobility’ undertook a circular journey
from De Appel in the summer of 2005, to Berlin’s Büro Friedrich, Vilnius’
Contemporary Art Centre and three venues in Budapest (Trafó, Studio Galeria
and Mücsarnok), before returning to Amsterdam a year later. At each venue
new artists were added by the local curator and on its return the exhibition
contained none of its original participants. As the catalogue suggests,
‘itself a migrant, the show is now what it has become through contact with
other communities’.
Despite a rather static and lacklustre installation, several works shone
out, notably Leopold Kessler’s video Import (2006), documenting his
grandiose method of smuggling a single packet of cigarettes across the
Austro-Hungarian border: taping it to the side of an intercity train. Judi
Werthein’s project Brinco (2005) refers to the ‘jump’ across the Mexican
border into the USA. She created trainers fitted with a compass, torch and
innersole map of the most popular crossing points between Tijuana and San
Diego, which she gave to illegal migrants making this dangerous journey. In
place of a brand, the heels are embroidered with the patron saint of Mexican
migrants, whilst the toes sport the American Bald Eagle. Sold as art objects
on the richer side of the border and given away to migrants on the poorer
side, Werthein’s project sparked media controversy in the USA and unleashed
a wave of hate mail. Elements of both are presented in the exhibition
alongside the shoes and her documentary about the border crossers.
Less controversial and less visible was Havanna (2006) by Miklós Erhardt,
filmed on the eponymous Budapest housing estate, a deprived neighbourhood
infamous for its high crime rate. The sparse visual footage recorded during
his two-week stay in an abandoned shop is accompanied by a carefully
scripted, self-critical and eloquent narrative in which he reflects upon the
inherent ambiguity of his position, the fact that he feels obliged to hide
his role as an artist in order to avoid distancing the people around him.
In her series ‘Last Minute’ (2005–6), Patricija Jurksaityté paints scenes of
hotels and swimming pools taken from holiday brochures. These familiar
images are rendered strange by her use of muted colours and the unusual
composition, which she adapts from historical biblical imagery. Her
paintings seem timeless and untouchable, creating the opposite effect from
the immediacy of the photographs she appropriates. With his work Untitled
(2006), Tomo Savic-Gecan relocates De Appel’s ticket booth upstairs,
altering our perception of the institution by allowing each visitor to set
the entry price for the one who follows.
Rather disappointing was Tomas Saraceno’s Airport City (2005), shown on a
monitor on the floor with an uninviting heap of foam to sit on, the
excitement of his solar energy balloon idea lost in a lazy presentation.
Patrick Tuttofuoco’s slideshow of his Trip Around the World (2005) also
seemed an unchallenging way to present a contemporary version of the
artist’s ‘grand tour’ and resembled the kind of montage screened by travel
agencies.
Most frustrating of all, however, was the inclusion of Yona Friedman’s
schematic frieze Superstructures for Venice and Berlin (2005), presented as
if it was a painting and used as a name-dropping footnote without any
critical contextualisation. Such a lack of engagement in the show’s
installation made reading the catalogue – with its excellent essay by Dirk
van Weelden – a richer experience than visiting the exhibition, perhaps
because it had become an anthology of works suggested by different curators
or because the project’s initiator Saskia Bos had left before the
exhibition’s return. Whatever the reason, despite a clever construction and
the presentation of recent works, it seemed to be suffering a severe case of
jetlag.
Zoë Gray