ZOEKENDE REIZIGER

Stedelijk Museum Kampen - Kampen, The Netherlands

April 2 - June 26, 2011

Adriaan Rees

The exhibition 'Zoekende Reiziger (Exploring Wanderer)' took place in the city of Kampen,

The Netherlands in 2011. It was the largest show of my work so far. In three buildings - the Kampen City Museum, the former Synagogue and in the Merchant's Gateway - I could show more than hundred sculptures and installations.

 

Thanks to the director dr. Stan Petrusa who made this huge project possible. He is following my career since the 1990s and he took the risk and he organized everything  to make this enormous overview of my work possible.

Besides the three shows, a hard cover catalogue in Dutch, English and Chinese was published. Besides that, for the museum shop I especially made a collector’s edition in a wooden box with handmade cigars, a mall porcelain grip and playing cards with images of my works!

 

During the show I gave lectures, tours and workshops. After this large scale project, solo presentations followed in collaboration with Livingstone gallery (The Hague, NL), De Vis gallery and Museum Hannemahuis (Harlingen, NL), C&H Art Space (Amsterdam, NL) and  Schoots+VanDuyse gallery (Antwerp, Belgium).

KAMPEN CITY MUSEUM

In the Kampen City Museum I showed my work in four different spaces in a typical museum setting. In the first room I showed a selection of my ceramic singers, with a new sound mix by Rob Daenen, together with the start of This is my Land. The 12 meters long Chinese mountain range with the typical Dutch sceneries painted on the flat parts continued in the third room. In the second space several monumental works were shown: Hairy Monster, The Wing and Ape. Besides these works, a selection of silver pieces made out of porcelain and glass were exhibited. In the third space visitors could see among others the bronze Screaming in a Bucket, the green Acrobat, Golgotha (with neon) and the main part of This is my Land. In the fourth room the installation Hochzeit (together with Gijs Frieling) found its third and final version.

FORMER SYNAGOGUE

The high big space in the former Synagogue was used for more experimental works and installations. Here the public could walk through and in the installations and also enjoy the exhibition from the second floor to see all the works in bird view. Close to the entrance first of all people could visit a small garden with tomatoes and hundreds of cactus plants. Next to this small garden I build a simple atelier for relaxing and making cigars. The setting was a mixture of Dutch and Chinese things and full of autobiographical elements. My grandfather was besides an acrobat, travelling and working all over Europe also a more quiet houseman, doing gardening and making handmade cigars. Therefore I put at the backside of the small house a pink life size Acrobat in hand stand.

 

Other installations were Street life, a collaboration between Sam Rees and Adriaan Rees. For Kampen we also produced a tableware set as a limited edition. At the back a blue installation with second hand cloths (collected in the city of Kampen) and the granite stone piece Carry Me. This time shown in a real metal cage. Other works were: Black Tree, Kopf and several photographs I made together with Ronald van Wieren from the series: From the Book of Man.

KOORNMARKTSPOORT / MERCHANT'S GATEWAY

In the Koornmarktspoort (Merchant's Gateway) people had to climb high stairs to see in a brick stone surrounding all kind of sculptures and installations on the first and second floor. Among them was the installation Pieces of Batman, two glass in led works (Pine Cone and Donkey Dudu) and the Singing Samurais (3 works in aluminum, glass and wood fired KiNoSe clay from Shigaraki, Japan). On the third floor, for the first time opened for public, I made an installation with white torsos and wooden ladders in this mysterious surrounding. The white bodies were hanging dramatically from the ceiling or were standing high above us in this medieval tower room.

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