Te Dog-smacker. Stan Wannet succeeds in surprising you with his work again and again. He is surely becoming renown as the artist, who reanimate dead animals with modern techniques. In this art installation again he reanimates dead animals in his special way. Dogs this time! As closed pets to man, the encounter is maybe even more horrific. Inspired by the novel of the known Dutch writer W.F. Hermans: "De God Denkbaar, Denkbaar De God" Stan Wannet depicts the absurdistic and violent scenes from this novel and he translated them in this probably even more alienated kinesthetic art installation, in which he reanimates these dogs to 'life-action' heroes.
The work of Stan Wannet is often quite confronting. Departing of the remains of hares, guinypigs and this time, dogs. Taking the skin and the structure of these animals and filling the reconstructions of their bodies with a lot of electro-technics and robot-technics. In doing so bringing them back to 'live' and let them performe remarkable and unexpected actions. His work does not ease your comfort zones, it goes more or less easely beyond them, presenting you quite an other picture as the images we normaly see about pets like dogs.
In June 2008 Wannet had already attracted our attention, with his contrubutions at the Verbeke Foundation in Kemzeke (Belgium), where he spend six months as an artist in residence. He made a few eye catching contributions to the exhibition "Vision in motion - Motion in vision". Remember the remarkable pair of hares, one writing mathematical formulas and the other working behind a type writer. They were quite intriguing as you can see.
After he had concluded his study at the Art School in 's-Hertogenbosch, Stan Wannet did a degree at the Poly Technics in Eindhoven. Specializing in how to beter master the art of building technical devises and using electro-technics and computerised robot-technics in a more integrated but poetic manner in his art. So if your are in the neighborhood, don't hesitate to go and see his new art installation four yourself. Not in Eindhoven or in Kemzeke this time, but in Stan's own home town 's-Hertogenbosch, at the CBK.
CBK 's-Hertogenbosch, Hekellaan 2, 5211 LX 's-Hertogenbosch. Still on show until 3 January 2010.
The two little video-movies: 1. The Dog-smacker and 2. The pair of extra ordinary Hares.
And still an other big contrast there is, with this little pavilion a bit further down the lane, where you find the weightless transparent glass building of Dan Graham.
It’s only a few weeks passed, that I spoke with him, on the memorial lecture in homage to the Nordic architect he so admires, Sverre Fehn. On the 5th of June in Venice, Sverre Fehn was the celebrated designer, the architect of the Nordic pavilion in the Giardini Park. Also a quite extraordinary geometric structure, with a few trees enclose in the building.
Something which associates quite easily with the contribution made here in the Warande, by Ugo Rondinone, Pagan Void. Rondinone made especially for the Stardust exhibition a new edition of this earlier work. Amongst a number of trees, he planted geometrically a rectangle of fluorescent yellow painted pebbles. A reference to the ‘sun’? Hm, now the sun reflects even brighter patches in the fluorescent yellow pebble bed.
But still there are other nice things to explore. Statues that generate reflections or try to dissolve themselves in their surroundings. A mirroring surface is a miraculous thing, Jeff Koons already discovered. Small things like the makeover of a parkbench, a thing you easely miss... if you didn't saw the little glimmers in the back of the perforated bench. 
In the Oude Warande we see small things to forget, like the makeover park bench by Hendrik-Jan Hunneman, or a mysterious boat floating in the pond, by Maria Roosen or the tree tall hide and seek statues of José Pedro Croft in which complete trees disvolves: "I'm not there!"
All kinds of reflections, to puzzle the mind, in the same time as when you are looking at these refreshing examples of contemporary art. Then I haven’t pointed out to you, that there are also a few fairytale figures on higher ground in the park, like Fox and Otter made by Rona Pondick.
And there are still others to see. To start this puzzling walk in the park, you almost think instantly that everybody got lost, by calls of the sound sculpure made by Job Koelewijn. No, it’s not the fairytale park of the Efteling your in. That's a bit further down the road near Waalwijk, in Kaatsheuvel. No it’s all to see in De Oude Warande, close to the University Campus in Tilburg. And probably twice as nice. Go and see it for yourself, it is open until 27th of September 2009, but it's surely as nice to visit, during the summer when the sun shines and the temperature under the trees in the forest is cool but not cold.
Sometimes they just give you that little nice surprise, where you hoped for entering an exhibition of contemporary art. Stressed Spaces opened earlier this month and just runs only until 19th of July. Stressed Spaces succeeds in giving you just this little extra, surprisingly well and this not only because the exhibition is organized in this somewhat strange location but surely also because of the vigor of the art which is on show here.
I know that more often, car parks can be and are used for quite a lot of other activities, then putting your car out of site for a while. This spot is close to the local City Museum for Contemporary Art the SM’s, where you will find the entrance to this strange ‘yellow’ intruder on the -2 sub ground level of this car park in the Paleiskwartier.
These yellow walls hides the temporarily building, which cuts through the centre of this low sub ground level and stresses out along for 175 meters. In this ‘yellow block’ the hibernation rooms are made to display a selection of the works of 25 artists. Each artist is placed in his or her own ‘cabin’ tailor-made for the occasion and fitted to the purpose of the specific visual art on display. This special ‘exhibition hall’ is designed by Krijn de Koning to give room to this year’s initiative of KW14, organized by Marjan Teeuwen.
Marjan Teeuwen, artist herself, explores each two years the possibilities of staging a site specific exhibition in ‘s Hertogenbosch. Empowered by themes she engaged with in her own work she sets out to find a location that fits, the means and selects the artist to participate. This time she invited 25, more or less known contemporary artists, working in different visual disciplines as there are: painters, sculptors, mixed media artists, and video & animation artists.
Her this year’s motive to invite just these artists she explains, is that they make art for its own purpose. A motivation which needs to be addressed, because nowadays art more and more is seen as to be an instrument to serve other goals. Goals which conflict with arts its own solemn identity. Art in the use with a purpose to make it a tool or a means, to target something else. In a way of what she calls “the miss use of art”. The autonomous identity of art is endangered by this development so that’s why “Stressed Spaces” is a call to arms.
More and more, she sees this happening everywhere around her. Art in use to reach out to meet the other goals of policymakers. Other goals for sure, as what art itself had in mind and where artists itself thought art is mend to be for. For its own sake!
Again, to justify any money or any attention is given to art, nowadays all kind of instrumental powers are contributed to art. Art as an instrument to educate the public’s morality, to endorse social development, to bind social integration, to revitalize old housing districts. This all to underlines art has ‘other’ necessary qualities, which will advocate and motivate why we should use and/or can use art and put public money in it. By now, when policymakers can’t think of anything else to realize their goals, they call artists and art in for the quick fix. Any goal can easily be reached by the introduction of these miraculous powers of art. So we don’t see art anymore as the only left toy for the rich, but as a mechanism to produce wealth and social development, or simply as a tool to bridge nasty contradiction in architecture or anything that unexpectedly went wrong in the first place.
Marjan Teeuwen stages, as we artists and art lovers don’t pay attention to this threat, art might dissolve in this instrumental use of art, as we know of in applied arts like; design, architecture, media and fashion or any other applied social sciences which think the use of these qualities of art, might come in quite handy.
That’s why Stressed Space can be seen as a comment on this especially. Just enjoy… its art!
This exhibition by Suzan Rüssler, curator of the same museum marks the threshold of a revaluation of this handicraft, which is in the last decades associated with a rather dull and old fashioned craft, only carried out as pastime by a few not the most fashioned old ladies. As if it had lost all its fashionable vigor what it had had earlier in the seventies of the bygone century.
In this exhibition, not everything touches the right string, but it marks a shift. As a means of expression, linking in with its rich history and connotations, knitting has it all. It was only recent, when I was at the symposium The Curators in Witte De With (Rotterdam), where I helped out Ann Demeester, director of De Appel (Amsterdam), to cut the thread of her knitting-work, so she could change color and relaxed continue her needle-work while listening to the interview with Seth Siegelaub.
So is it or isn’t it a women’s thing? Of course it has a rich history in the arts and crafts movement of the sixties and seventies, where it was eagerly used just because of its connected with social politics and feminism. But it still puts up artistic questions when mixed with actual topics like conservation and sustainability again, which are in the centre of our todays attention. Artists always have had a keen eye for these kind of lines, which like a ‘file rouge’ runs through time. It is a fact that there are even knitting interventions in urban public spaces, like fore instance in last year’s ZXZW festival in Tilburg. Knitting as an act of intervention! I am happily awaiting the New Gorilla Girls, who will pick-up this act of resistance to the bright and shiny male driven art world of the shiny naked steels of Jeff Koons and bling bling armored pieces by Damien Hirsts. These beautiful balaclava’s (Avata's) would come in quite handy and change any act of violence in a smooth and artistic intervention of feminine power. 
This modest exhibition in Tilburg, reveals this new potent possibility of the gentle power and concentrated attention of this barely by artist and designers forgotten craft: Knitting-it into a New World. We can use some change..., can't we? But don't let it come a Brave New World, like it already is far to much.
And what is in the drawers of the table up above, is for you, yourself to discover. It explains the downfall of the 'plastic surgery' after too much of ER and VR of our photo shopped realities and tellies. A man again, this doctor 'Mad-lock'. 
In the exhibition space of Artis Den Bosch 'Technocratic Openness, Free Aggression', Rachel Koolen creates an special intervention which uses photography, video and display strategies to enroll and endorse a personal comment on the bureaucratic phenomenon’s of the Dutch social service institution. The Institution which is mend to give support to people on the raffle’s of Dutch Society. Being an artist, depending on income support, Koolen has also endured to participate and play part in this nowadays bureaucracy service system.
The artist focuses on the “Centrum voor Werk en Inkomen” as the central location and the focused subject in her work. In “Centrum voor Werk en Inkomen” are to day the so called ‘labour squares’; the located offices where the registration desks of unemployed workers is integrated with the execution of the supervision services, as well as that of the support projects and the regular contact meetings with clients are held. Services to secure rules and arrangements which lead the unemployed workers to new jobs.
In an enclosed network of connections she exposes these layers, deconstructs and shows how these changes in presentation evokes a changes in the appearance of the bureaucracy itself, still forcing up even higher levels of control on their clients in a smooth and bright surrounding. In this transformation in which bureaucracy gave itself a pimped outlook, not everything looks likes what it is. In an even subtle artistic play Rachel Koolen brings to surface that what gently threatens to submerge.
De tweede kunstenaar is Ronald Ophuis (1968, woont en werkt in Amsterdam) met zijn zeer groot formaat schilderijen met confronterende onderwerpkeuze. Obsure voorstellingen die de donkere aspecten van onze samenleving uitbeelden; pijn, lijden, geweld, executie, verkrachting. Genoemd wordt dat Ophuis 'het kwaad' een gezicht wil geven?