4 works, 3 artists, one projection at Rib

Artists: Christoph Meier, Axel Stockburger, Steve Van den Bosch

Exhibition title: 4 works, 3 artists, one projection

Curated by: Maziar Afrassiabi

Venue: Rib, Rotterdam, The Netherlands

Date: September 12 – November 14, 2015

Photography: images copyright and courtesy of the artists and Rib

The departure point of the exhibition is the very question of launching a new art space. It hints at the realities in which Rib begins its operation. Committing to the ‘Real’ of art, this first exhibition introduces Rib as an ambitious gesture of minimal expectations. The displayed works remind us of the often unsettling ambiguities in the art world while being testimonies of affirmative possibilities within these constraints.

Christoph Meier and Axel Stockburger (AT) present their film Il Grande Silenzio. They used art space Ve.Sch in Vienna as a filmset, shooting a staged exhibition opening. They asked their artist colleagues from Vienna to act and to contribute with a simulated artwork as prop. ‘Initially Il Grande Silenzio was destined to become a massive youtube hit, with its black humour and punk attitude and lots of blood and fun. This however had to fail because none of us had any money left to buy the necessary hits from Asian like farms.’

The exhibition continues across the street at Kam Tao Snackbar with three enlarged casting portrait posters. These are part of a larger series, showing actor-artists, some of whom did not take part in the final film. All twenty portraits can be ordered for print on demand.

In 2013 Krist Gruijthuijsen wrote in an email to Christoph Meier: “… your work is social. Even though abstracted and reduced to form, its necessity to exist is honest and sincere. Everything seems
to start with a set of yet undefined conditions. You are an architect, hence down. The notion of
a ‘pedestal’ is your oyster. Re-defining and re-using is undeniably your vicious circle. You under- mine value. You undermine criteria.”

Axel Stockburger employs global popular culture, such as computer games, and blockbuster films as a starting point for the production of his videos and text works. His work engages with novel forms of participatory and fan culture that have emerged with the transition from traditional mass media like TV and Film towards the Internet.

Steve Van den Bosch (BE) presents two works, which specifically focus on the dynamics of re- vealing and concealing in the relation between space, object and viewer as an irreversible con- dition of any given exhibition space. Van den Bosch’s work has been described as balancing “between invisibility and straight materiality”. His often minimal works are concerned with the artwork’s periphery.