Additional opening times:
22 Nov, 14:00-18:00
23 and 24 Nov, 12:00 - 20:00

Visual artists Oscar Santillán and Matthew C. Wilson, who have been in dialogue for almost ten years, present their works together for the first time in this two-person exhibition. In each artist’s own way, they draw out complex relations between seemingly disparate histories, methodologies, and cosmologies shaping the way humans relate to their present location in time and space. In Drained Atlas the artists present recent and new works bringing together the histories and speculative futures of scientific exploration as the entangled process of undoing worlds to generate new ones.



Public Presentation

Drained Atlas mini-symposium
Organized and moderated by Drained Atlas exhibition artists Oscar Santillán and Matthew C. Wilson

23 November, 16:00-17:30
Barbara Visser, Marjolijn Dijkman, Kyveli Mavrokordopolou

24 November, 16:00 -17:30
Ana María Gómez López, Frans Snik, Jo-Lene Ong

Barbara Visser, artist
Marjolijn Dijkman, artist and co-founder of Enough Room for Space
Kyveli Mavrokordopoulou, researcher and art critic
Frans Snik, astrophysicist
Jo-Lene Ong, curator
Ana María Gómez López, artist

Against a background of rapid environmental, social, and technological change, hitherto unknown worlds are at once being explored and created while others slip out of being.

The Drained Atlas mini-symposium brings together artists, researchers, and thinkers to discuss various considerations around “worlding,” seeing the world as a sentient system: not as a thing but as a process that is always coming into being through interactions, always contingent.

For humans, such contingencies include the available forms of human knowledge production and social relations in a given time and place. But in the present, most notably through the Anthropocene, human and non-human worlding have become ever-more entangled. It is within this context, in the search for new languages, affections, and critical tools, that the dialogue between art and science has become more relevant than ever before. Both are, for example, increasingly concerned with similar topics, from ecology to astronomy, and similar methods, such as investigative fieldwork.

The mini-symposium opens a space to extend possibilities and articulate open questions surrounding different modes of worlding. Each guest will discuss their own work connecting to this theme (found also at the core of the Drained Atlas exhibition at puntWG), proceeding to an open conversation between the guests.

11th of January: Artist talk and debate. Time TBC.

During these three days, the artist will reflect on her project “A House For The Un-Known,” which was developed in Amsterdam and Rio de Janeiro during the 2019. For this project she worked on the question: how do we live together in the urban context? This question led to the exploration of urban space, human and power relations, and of urban cultures. These observations made very visible a diversity of vulnerabilities within the urban construct, both in urban housing but also of the body within the city. As some social groups are more vulnerable than others, their body becomes more vulnerable as well.

The project explored how vulnerability is manifested and how could it be expressed through sculptural work, and other mediums. The pop culture of the city becomes a material for exploring performance. A collaboration with Bijlmer rap artist is in the process and the participation of urban dwellers as well.

A debate will take place after the artist talk. Main question will be how do we experience our living together with each other in the city? How is multicultural diversity treated within the gentrification processes? But also how art can search for ways to live together?

A diverse group of stakeholders of urban living is very welcome to participate of this talk and debate. Scientists, artists, architects, urban dwellers in general. Feel welcome!

The project was possible to realise thanks to the support of the Mondriaan Fund and the Stichting Stokroos.

For more information about the artist: magaberr.net

Waiting for Sleep is a homemade CGI survival romance. The film recounts the last days of a young man - Will - who lives surrounded by zombies and who sleepwalks at night, undoing the protections that he sets up for his protection in the daytime. Outside the boundaries of the infected area, society as we know it persists.

Read an interview with the artist on warehouse.

It’s just after harvest time, the autumn of 1519. Or 2019. It’s the aftermath of…of what? Strange things are happening in the village. Rumours of plague. Just ask at the tavern: there’s something a little odd about this year’s crop, the baker has gone mad, and the brewer is working overtime. Something around here smells a little off…

You, the itinerant artist, have just arrived to fulfil your commission at the abbey. But to complete your work, you must navigate village life, and find out what’s eating this town before it gets you too. The bel is kapot, you have to knock to get in. This is an exhibition in the form of a riddle, or a riddle in the form of an exhibition, set in a space and time very much like our own.

KLOPPEN AUB, BEL IS KAPOT is a collaborative project by Ash Kilmartin and Bergur Thomas Anderson, with appearances by fellow townspeople Lisa Kuglitsch, Gunnar Gunnsteinsson, Hrafnhildur Sigurðardóttir, Sigrún Gyða Sveinsdóttir and Arbeiter. 

Ash Kilmartin (Aotearoa/New Zealand) and Bergur Thomas Anderson (Iceland) are artists who live in Rotterdam. This exhibition is made possible with the support of AFK.

Performance

Title: Stonecarver’s Dilemma
Date and time: 19 October 2019, 17:00-21:00


Stonecarver’s dilemma (2019) working drawing. Bergur Thomas Anderson and Ash Kilmartin

Stonecarver’s Dilemma is a live choose-your-own-adventure in which the audience decides the fate of the young artist who attempts to live by their work, and by their good conscience. Live music, improvised foley, dangerous snacks and specially brewed drinks might just help with these difficult choices.

“I want to belong to the living” is an exhibition by Isfrid Angard Siljehaug, Anna Hillbom and Ann-Catrin Olsson. The artists wish to make possible a tactile re-reading of the past, where the agency of each artist's work at times is blurred, at times visible. A play with the relation of object, artist and agency in the gallery space, as well as in a broader sense of history writing.

Elements from art history, architecture, mythology and the body are used to enable a personal understanding of time, a rupture in chronology. By that bring out a possible mystic, a giggle, something skin-warm.

The title indicates a wish to bring to life fragments adapted from the past. Canalized and altered, they become animated shreds of something vaguely familiar. “I want to belong to the living” refers to the body's yearning for eternality. A fantasy about sculptures who long to be touched. Like John Berger is looking for the living in Greek sculptures.

”All the sculptures stolen from Greece who are now in foreign museums, are strangely un-sensual and that's one of the reasons they belong here (in Greece). The sensual in art is in a way a glorification of participation, a cohesion between body and nature. Here does no such cohesion exist. The famous ideals that the classic sculptors searched for was actually a comfort for the loneliness of the body. All these sculptures were, it seems to me now, mediators of a well controlled longing without end.”

- John Berger

This exhibition is generously supported by the Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst and Iapsis/Swedish Arts Council.

This is the end presentation of the current AirWG resident Mo Sirra supported by Mondriaan Tijdelijke Binnenlandateliers programme.

“Mo Sirra examines and theorizes the essence of creation. How can one mediate art? How can one create? And more importantly, how can one create 'freely'? This examination has deeply influenced his approach to cultural practice and is reminiscent of the (memory of the) sites or lieu de mémoire (site of memory) of the French historian Pierre Nora.

As Mo Sirra approaches art practice as an act of urgency, he focuses on the impermanent and spatially complex nature of art practice through his diverse and fluid work encompassing drawing, installation, photography, and sculpture. The politicization of life and hence art is one of his driving forces, informed and enriched by personal experiences leading to (hi)stories that entangle the first person with(in) the third--blurring the edges of a self-portrait.”
Lora Sariaslan

Artist Statement

The artist in question argues that art is an act of urgency requires practitioner and institution at state of emergency. Despite this prescheduled presentation; please be advised that the artist, the content of the presentation, the opening hours, the location are subject to change.

What if the human being inherited a contaminated knowledge?

What if ‘art’ is advertisement instrument for Capitalism, propaganda for other Ideology?

What if ‘freedom of expression’ is daily exercise, rather than an article in Human Rights Act?

What if ‘independence’ is a continuous struggle against suppression rather an inactive clause in a constitution?

When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty.

OPEN CALL for 2020 Program

atelierWG Foundation invites artists operating in any medium to organize an exhibition to be presented at puntWG, an exhibition space located in the centre of Amsterdam.

puntWG seeks to provide a platform for invited artists to temporarily own the space with a sense of freedom and responsibility to give form to their own programme and make contact with the public.

We encourage proposals for duo and group exhibitions that encourage dialogue between the artists and their work. We also invite proposals for one-person presentations on the basis that they seek interaction with other (relevant) individuals or groups through a public program.

We welcome proposals that include a rich public program of events such as artist talks, performances, screenings, (performative) lectures, dinners etc.

Artists will be selected on the basis of the quality of their proposal and their considered approach to using the space.

Each exhibition will last four weeks (including installation and de-installation times).

This call is not intended for curated group exhibitions.

Support:

The organization of both puntWG and Foundation atelierWG almost fully depends on volunteers. 

atelierWG Foundation provides selected artists with an open platform to realize their projects at puntWG. This includes the space and basic equipment, professional photo documentation and the production of printed matter to accompany each exhibition. As a small non-profit organization run by a group of artists, we unfortunately cannot provide financial support for production. puntWG’s team will issue acceptance letters for successful applicants to support their applications for external funding.

You can find the puntWG floorplan HERE.

Application guidelines:

Please send ONE pdf (max 10 mb) which includes the following documents in your email  submission:

•       Full name, date and place of birth, postal address, phone number, e-mail and website
•       CV, max two A4 pages per participating artists
•       A proposal (max. 250 words) that includes a description of your exhibition and the public programme. Please be concise
•       A short motivation for showing at puntWG
•       A maximum of five supporting images
•       Please indicate your preferable months for the exhibition and the times when you are not available. The more accurate you are, the better we can organize the calendar

Please indicate if you at the time of this application have already (partly) secured funding for the exhibition.

Proposals to be emailed to opencall@atelierwg.nl

The submission deadline is August 1st 2019.

All recipients will be notified before October 1st 2019.

For general information and questions regarding puntWG, contact team puntWG: opencall@atelierwg.nl

Organization and programming of puntWG: Lily Lanfermeijer, Mila Lanfermeijer, Michelle Son, Maaike Anne Stevens and Tao G. Vrhovec Sambolec. 

www.puntwg.nl 

About

Following the relocation of the hospital Wilhelmina Gasthuis in 1984, now the AMC – Academic Medical Center – artists, small business owners and residents have shaped and preserved the unique character and special site of WG in Amsterdam. Today a large number of artists are living and working on the grounds, including those who are part of atelierWG (in Pavilions 18 and 19). 

AtelierWG Foundation, established in 1989, houses 120 artists' studios as well as initiating projects in the fields of art and culture, including international exchanges and Open Studio routes.

In 2006 puntWG was created as an interdisciplinary exhibition space and platform for the arts, with a lively program of exhibitions, performances, concerts, lectures and discussions with the aim of initiating an open and broad discourse between artists and the public. PuntWG was initiated by the artists of atelierWG, who finance the space and organize its programming.

airWG, an artist-in-residence, opened in September 2015, hosting a guest studio for national and international artists with an emphasis on research and collaboration.

The central piece of She-Wolves is an experimental video game composed by field work material collected in the Alps (during workshops, interviews, and walks), with personal narrative content inspired by mainstream pop culture.

It tells the sensual story of women werewolves in the Alps de Haute-Provence, where the wolf re-appeared 20 years ago, a hundred years after its extinction in France. The return of the predator causes great political tensions in local communities opposing shepherd protecting their cheptel, to ecologists in favor of its protection. In parallel, vernacular legends raise again, inspired by local stories and movies like Twilight. The mythical meets the political ; the local blends into the global.

She-Wolves capsizes the gender paradigm of the powerful fertilizing force in nature and gives the bestial hairy power to women. It opens the door for an open narrative experiment taking its sources in ecological matters, feminism, folklore and pop culture.

During the opening, the performative version of the game will be performed at 19:30.