Every Loft Needs a Sink at Vleeshal

Artists: Lauri Ainala, Susan Cianciolo, Keren Cytter, Catharine Czudej, Jacob Dwyer, Manuela Gernedel, Fiona Mackay, Hanna-Maria Hammari, Niklas Taleb, Madelon Vriesendorp

Exhibition title: Every Loft Needs a Sink

Curated by: Root Canal

Venue: Vleeshal, Middelburg, The Netherlands

Date: July 14 – September 15, 2019

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artists and Vleeshal

The group exhibition ‘Every Loft Needs a Sink’ is curated by the artist initiative Root Canal, consisting of Anders Dickson, Frieder Haller, Henna Hyvärinen and Thomas Swinkels. They met in 2017 when they were all selected for a two years residency at De Ateliers and moved to the same apartment in Amsterdam. They started their exhibition practice in their at-tic. Upon leaving their apartment, the initiative has embraced a nomadic identity. In the past year they have curated exhibitions in various locations in Amsterdam.

For the exhibition at Vleeshal, Root Canal explores the weird terrain between varying systems of how information, objects and memories are categorized. This is elicited in the act of rebuilding the original Root Canal exhibition space: a group of life-sized attic spaces hover in the late Gothic architecture of Vleeshal. The indexing of objects and data is demonstrated in the way that individual artists and positions inhabit the attic space; thus illustrating these differing methods and characteristics.

Over time the attic—or loft—has slipped into an interesting discourse for economic consideration. Originally used as storage, the attic was affordable and often rented by artists as studios and homes. Accompanying the gentrification and rising number of people moving to the city, the attic gradually transitioned from undesirable to luxurious. Today the idea of the studio loft is synonymous with what we envision as a fancy living situation in a busy city.

In homage to their first site, Root Canal looks to utilize the at-tic space through the reconstructed versions of it as a psychic substitute for the mind. In the spaces at Vleeshal the artists are partitioned into both solo and group presentations. Looking to Gaston Bachelard’s writing on the appearance of the attic in dreams, it is recognized as the seat of enlightenment and perhaps also as a collective consciousness. By further consideration of its use again in the waken life as a recess or cavity in the house-body, it functions more as a niche for secrets, and a place to protect treasured items. Further still, could it not also be the location where manifestations of psychologically repressed experiences appear?

‘Every Loft Needs a Sink’, curated by Root Canal, with: Lauri Ainala, Susan Cianciolo, Keren Cytter, Catharine Czudej, Jacob Dwyer, Manuela Gernedel & Fiona Mackay, Hanna-Maria Hammari, Niklas Taleb, Madelon Vriesendorp, 14.07. – 15.09.2019, installation photo, Vleeshal, Middelburg. Photo: Franz Mueller Schmidt

Manuela Gernedel & Fiona Mackay, ‘Upstairs’, 2019, ‘Every Loft Needs a Sink’, curated by Root Canal, 14.07. – 15.09.2019, Vleeshal, Middelburg. Photo: Franz Mueller Schmidt

Lauri Ainala, ‘Unien Savonlinna’, 2010, ‘Every Loft Needs a Sink’, curated by Root Canal, 14.07. – 15.09.2019, Vleeshal, Middelburg. Photo: Franz Mueller Schmidt

Susan Cianciolo, ‘Costumes from Scene 10, The Celebration and Games’, 2019, ‘Every Loft Needs a Sink’, curated by Root Canal, 14.07. – 15.09.2019, Vleeshal, Middelburg. Photo: Franz Mueller Schmidt

Susan Cianciolo, ‘Costumes from Scene 10, The Celebration and Games’, 2019 (detail), ‘Every Loft Needs a Sink’, curated by Root Canal, 14.07. – 15.09.2019, Vleeshal, Middelburg. Photo: Franz Mueller Schmidt

Jacob Dwyer, ‘Goin’ Mad’, 2019, ‘Every Loft Needs a Sink’, curated by Root Canal, 14.07. – 15.09.2019, Vleeshal, Middelburg. Photo: Franz Mueller Schmidt

Hanna-Maria Hammari, ‘Blonde Poodle’, 2019, ‘Every Loft Needs a Sink’, curated by Root Canal, 14.07. – 15.09.2019, Vleeshal, Middelburg. Photo: Franz Mueller Schmidt

Madelon Vriesendorp, ‘Flagrant Délit’, 1979, ‘Every Loft Needs a Sink’, curated by Root Canal, 14.07. – 15.09.2019, Vleeshal, Middelburg. Photo: Franz Mueller Schmidt

Keren Cytter, ‘Game’, 2015 & Hanna-Maria Hammari, ‘The Afghan (Puppy Don’t Go)’, 2017, ‘Every Loft Needs a Sink’, curated by Root Canal, 14.07. – 15.09.2019, Vleeshal, Middelburg. Photo: Franz Mueller Schmidt

Susan Cianciolo, ‘Costumes from Scene 10, The Celebration and Games’, 2019 (performance), ‘Every Loft Needs a Sink’, curated by Root Canal, 14.07. – 15.09.2019, Vleeshal, Middelburg. Photo: Franz Mueller Schmidt