Louwrien Wijers & Lawrence Weiner at Shimmer

Artists: Louwrien Wijers, Lawrence Weiner

Exhibition title: LW/LW with Louwrien Wijers, Lawrence Weiner, and friends

Curated by: Shimmer (Eloise Sweetman and Jason Hendrik Hansma)

Venue: Shimmer, Rotterdam, The Netherlands

Date: February 1 – May 5, 2018

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artists and Shimmer, Rotterdam

Dear friends,

We proudly introduce you to Moment VI: LW/LW with Louwrien Wijers, Lawrence Weiner, and friends. As one of the most influential figures of her generation, Louwrien has brought together communities in her mental sculptures since 1968. She was a collaborator of Joseph Beuys, His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, and Andy Warhol to name a few. In 1990, her most intricate mental sculpture Art meets Science and Spirituality in a changing Economy manifested as a 5day conference, television program and exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. The sculpture continues to resonate with artists, curators, and audiences today.

Louwrien’s artworks are conduits and connectors to other practices, politics, and generations, that transform Shimmer into a place of meeting. Enveloping the audience are two large wall works that face each other. The first is a new artwork Island 19731974 by Wijers depicting her time living on PENisland in the ship ‘Silence’ with an interior made from driftwood. The artwork looks fondly over to her brotherinart Lawrence Weiner’s wall work A Wall Built to Face The Land & Face The Water (At Sea Level) (2008). Importantly LW/LW takes stock in the generosity of friendships spanning a lifetime, inviting unexpected connections and ways of remaining open, fluid, and available to identity, aesthetics, and materiality. Also in the show are two wall works Saint Society and Direct Perception executed by Louwrien for the exhibition.

Woven through the exhibition are a series of mental sculptures including a dinner with Louwrien and her longterm collaborator Egon Hanfstingl. With Egon, we invite you to join us in the dinner’s preparation. In this mental sculpture, the ‘meal’ becomes a conduit to connect different social groups who are bound together by food in the work Cooking Together/Eating Together/Talking Together.

Thankyou to the support of Louwrien Wijers, Lawrence Weiner, Egon Hanfstingl, Mondriaan Fonds, City of Rotterdam, Pérez Art Museum Miami, Stichting Stokroos, Studio Oppa, Junsheng Zhou and those that wish to remain anonymous.