FEAR [Æxchange Sofia - Haga]
8 June 19:00: Opening
On view until June 23

 

A duo show by Arianne Olthaar and Marjolijn van der Meij inspired on the décor of Werner Rainer Fassbinders’ films.
A burning cigarette, mirrors in mirrors, half opened doors, gothic wallpapers, a dead cat.

Since 1993 Olthaar and Van der Meij have worked as a duo on a series of short 8/16mm films, which were shown on film festivals and in several galleries. Amongst one of them was the film ‘Souvenir from Africa’, based on a book from the Dutch writer W.F. Hermans about a monkey who is alone and isolated in an typical 50ties apartment, waiting for his ‘God’, the man who took him in his house as a pet. It deals with unconventional love and failure.
Since 2006 they took their own direction and concentrated on their individual work. On the occasion of Æxchange Sofia - Haga they come together again to give shape to an installation based on their shared fascination for Werner Rainer Fassbinder films.

Arianne Olthaar (1970, NL) graduated as a painter from the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague in 1992. She is making experimental films, photographs and miniature models. Her work has a strong focus on the once-luxurious interiors of public spaces, built in the 1970s and 80s (primate enclosures, dining cars, hotel nightclubs, discotheques, a school interior). Interiors that once represented an explicit modern luxury but nowadays have an aura of faded glory and are increasingly disappearing by renovation or demolishment. Her work has been presented in a variety of exhibitions as well as numerous international film festivals.
http://www.arianneolthaar.nl

Marjolijn van der Meij (1970, NL) studied at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague. Her earlier work consisted of drawn landscapes in which she placed people originating from a different context. In doing so, she questioned their mutual relationships and their connection to their surroundings. Recently, she took a new step in the development of her work when she folded and creased a large charcoal drawing of a waterfall to realize a three-dimensional effect.
Subsequently she started applying this method to photographs of movie stars, album covers with rock artists and postcards with buildings and landscapes; items she has been collecting for years. By creasing the images, they are distorted, but are also given a new intensity and focus. At the same time this causes a sense of disorientation, forcing us to reconsider our relationship with our everyday surroundings, society and the memories and associations evoked by the photographs. By using different materials, such as shiny silk, mirrors and aluminum
foil her crumbled kitschy sculptures look more like creatures from the
future, launched straight into orbit from some unconscious mind.
http://www.marjolijnvandermeij.nl/

The exhibition is part of an exchange project with Æther's sister Haga in The Hague where in may we opened a show with the Bulgarian participants -Svetlana Mircheva and Stela Vasileva, 'State of Apparition'.

Æxchange Sofia - Haga is made possible with the kind support of Stroom Den Haag.