De Rijke & De Rooij. Spaces and Films 1998-2002

One of the recent Van Abbemuseum acquisitions is the film Untitled, 2001 from the Amsterdam-based artists Jeroen de Rijke and Willem de Rooij. The film provides a 10-minute view of a graveyard just outside the Indonesian city of Jakarta from a static camera angle. The camera is in a slightly elevated position overlooking the graves, which are overgrown with all kinds of grasses, flowering shrubs and trees. This element takes up about half the image, while in the background a row of skyscrapers are outlined against a bright blue sky. Due to the exceptionally large focal distance of the lens, foreground, middle distance and background are all rendered just as sharp and detailed.

Untitled is the third in a series, this far, of four 35mm films made since 1998. Like the previously made films, the static camera position gives the impression that we are looking at a classic composition of a painting. This is enhanced by the fact that the artists have deliberately and carefully ‘staged’ the space where the film is shown. Moreover, the film is only shown on request. By so doing, the artists intend that concentration will be completely focused on the dimension of time and on observation. With Untitled, which carries no sound, viewers are thrown back on themselves and on the state of their own bodies within the environment. In a peaceful yet, at the same time, emphatic manner aspects of the individual self, of the finity of earth and also general sociological reflections are opened up within a modern medium panel.

This screening of this work in the Netherlands is accompanied with a publication on working with 35mm film, which sows the seeds for a fresh interpretation of the work of Jeroen de Rijke and Willem de Rooij.

de Rijke / de Rooij
Spaces and Films 1998-2002
Kuratorin: Eva Meyer-Hermann