Artist: Harm van den Dorpel
Exhibition title: World as Lover, World as Self (Chapter 2: A Field Without Boundaries by Harm van den Dorpel)
Curated by: Shimmer (Eloise Sweetman and Jason Hendrik Hansma)
Venue: Shimmer, Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Date: February 5 – June 12, 2021
Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Shimmer, Rotterdam
World as Lover, World as Self is an overlapping exhibition comprising of several chapters, where bodies, materials, and technologies go outside predefined cultural presumptions. By doing so, the exhibition de-categorizes, shapeshifts, and morphs. To glimmer, to shimmer. We take aesthetic distance not to create ‘foreign’ or ‘other’ but to rethink community, to engage with the world as lover, and as self.
Inspired by environmental activist, and Buddhist philosopher, Joanna Macy, the exhibition World As Lover, World As Self turns to art to help us “relinquish our separateness” and take account of the “residue” of the world that we assume we know. Through defamiliarization as a means to ‘turn the familiar strange’, we try to redefine the self and subsequent community. Defamiliarization, or aesthetic distance, is a literary and artistic technique coined by Russian Formalists in 1918. The concept uses language in a way where everyday objects are reconsidered by transforming perception.
In Chapter 2: A Field Without Boundaries, we present a back-catalogue of works made by Harm van den Dorpel over the past few years. Starting in February 2021, Shimmer will regularly ‘refresh’ the exhibition to reformat the value systems of artistic and curatorial exhibition-making by creating shifting sets and generations within A Field Without Boundaries. In the first phase, we present work of his series Death Imitates Language, which emerged from a genetic algorithm written by the artist, then rendered onto acrylic glass through finely milled perforations seducing the eye into seeing liquid forms. Presented at the same time is a series of nested brown paper bags from which the artist hand-cuts organic shapes. Referencing the chance-based practice of late dadaist artist Hans Arp, Van den Dorpel creates logics within logics and layerings of chance.
Harm van den Dorpel (1981, NL) is a Berlin-based artist whose practice includes the creation of sculpture, collage, computer animation, computer-generated graphics and interaction design. His work has been widely shown at exhibitions including the New Museum in New York, MoMA PS1 in New York, Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing, Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, MMCA Seoul, ZKM Karlsruhe, and the Netherlands Media Art Institute in Amsterdam. In 2015, Van den Dorpel started left gallery an online gallery that commissions, produces, and sells downloadable files.
Thanks to Magali Reus, Harm van den Dorpel, Gemeente Rotterdam, Creative Industries NL, Mondriaan Fonds, The Approach, London, Upstream Gallery, Amsterdam.
On the edge of Rotterdam’s port, Shimmer is an exhibition space that operates with an ever-changing studio-like mentality, where knowledge arises through participation and experimentation. Alongside the expanded exhibition World as Lover, World as Self, their platforms include the events program Sunday Mornings With, the online reading-aloud program Across The Way With, and the online mixtape series On the Waves With. Shimmer was co-initiated by Eloise Sweetman and Jason Hendrik Hansma in February 2018.
Magali Reus, Wallpaper from a recent photographic series, 2020, Harm van den Dorpel, Juancar Zolim Juancar, 100 x 100 x 4cm, 2017, Installation View, photo courtesy of Shimmer and taken by Sol Archer
Magali Reus, Wallpaper from a recent photographic series, 2020, Harm van den Dorpel, Pseudocount Arp Bootleg, Hand cut paper bags, 31 x 20 x 10 cm, 2019, Installation View, photo courtesy of Shimmer and taken by Sol Archer
Magali Reus, Wallpaper from a recent photographic series, 2020, Harm van den Dorpel, Pseudocount Arp Bootleg, Hand cut paper bags, 31 x 20 x 10 cm, 2019, Installation View, photo courtesy of Shimmer and taken by Sol Archer
Harm van den Dorpel, Juancar Zolim Juancar, 100 x 100 x 4cm, 2017, Harm van den Dorpel, Pseudocount Arp Bootleg, Hand cut paper bags, 31 x 20 x 10 cm, 2019, Installation View, photo courtesy of Shimmer and taken by Sol Archer
Harm van den Dorpel, Juancar Zolim Juancar, 100 x 100 x 4cm, 2017, Harm van den Dorpel, Pseudocount Arp Bootleg, Hand cut paper bags, 31 x 20 x 10 cm, 2019, Installation View, photo courtesy of Shimmer and taken by Sol Archer
Harm van den Dorpel, Juancar Zolim Juancar, 100 x 100 x 4cm, 2017, Harm van den Dorpel, Pseudocount Arp Bootleg, Hand cut paper bags, 31 x 20 x 10 cm, 2019, Installation View, photo courtesy of Shimmer and taken by Sol Archer
Harm van den Dorpel, Juancar Zolim Juancar, 100 x 100 x 4cm, 2017, Installation View, photo courtesy of Shimmer and taken by Sol Archer
Magali Reus, Wallpaper from a recent photographic series, 2020, Harm van den Dorpel, Pseudocount Arp Bootleg, Hand cut paper bags, 31 x 20 x 10 cm, 2019, Installation View, photo courtesy of Shimmer and taken by Sol Archer
Harm van den Dorpel, Juancar Zolim Juancar, 100 x 100 x 4cm, 2017, detail, photo courtesy of Shimmer and taken by Sol Archer
Harm van den Dorpel, Juancar Zolim Juancar, 100 x 100 x 4cm, 2017, detail, photo courtesy of Shimmer and taken by Sol Archer
Harm van den Dorpel, Juancar Zolim Juancar, 100 x 100 x 4cm, 2017, detail, photo courtesy of Shimmer and taken by Sol Archer
Harm van den Dorpel, Pseudocount Arp Bootleg, Hand cut paper bags, 31 x 20 x 10 cm, 2019, Installation View, photo courtesy of Shimmer and taken by Sol Archer
Harm van den Dorpel, Pseudocount Arp Bootleg, Hand cut paper bags, 31 x 20 x 10 cm, 2019, Installation View, photo courtesy of Shimmer and taken by Sol Archer
Harm van den Dorpel, Pseudocount Arp Bootleg, Hand cut paper bags, 31 x 20 x 10 cm, 2019, Installation View, photo courtesy of Shimmer and taken by Sol Archer
Magali Reus, Wallpaper from a recent photographic series, 2020, Installation View, photo courtesy of Shimmer and taken by Sol Archer
Harm van den Dorpel, Pseudocount Arp Bootleg, Hand cut paper bags, 31 x 20 x 10 cm, 2019, Installation View, photo courtesy of Shimmer and taken by Sol Archer
Harm van den Dorpel, Pseudocount Arp Bootleg, Hand cut paper bags, 31 x 20 x 10 cm, 2019, Installation View, photo courtesy of Shimmer and taken by Sol Archer