Higher! Higher! Lower, Lower. Louder! Louder! Softer, Softer at Shimmer

Artists: Zarouhie Abdalian, Gordon Hall, Ian Kiaer, Elena Narbutaitė, Ma Qiusha

Exhibition title: Higher! Higher! Lower, Lower, Louder! Louder! Softer, Softer

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

Venue: Shimmer, Rotterdam, The Netherlands

Date: December, 2019 – March, 2020

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

Higher! Higher! Lower, Lower. Louder! Louder! Softer, Softer is an exhibition that unfolds over one year. Since September 2019, we have shared space with works by Zarouhie Abdalian, Gwenneth Boelens, Liu Chao-tze, Gordon Hall, Ian Kiaer, Elena Narbutaitė, Shanta Rao and Ma Qiusha. We will continue with the exhibition until July 2020 with works by Theo van Doesburg, Stanely Brouwn, Joseph Grigely, Kate Newby, and Katie West.

Kindly see our exhibition schedule for when the artworks enter and exit the exhibition.

Building from Shimmer’s first program of fading exhibitions in, through, and out of each other, we now shift rhythms by curating singular artworks over stretches of time. Higher! Higher! Lower, Lower. Louder! Louder! Softer, Softer embodies slow deliberate processes with a changing register. By doing so the exhibition moves like water, unfixed, in motion. We understand the exhibition as a choreographic score where through shifting rhythms, registers, and movements artworks overlap, where ideas and generations cross-over. The format of our exhibition unfolds over time, opening up and crossing conceptual, spatial, and temporal borders. We are entering into times of deep environmental, global and mechanical change, where we need all the knowledge and crossovers we can get our hands-on. On our horizon are radical shifts of what and how we mean to each other, how we come together and how we share. With this in mind, we curate to reconsider the past to shape the future and to better accommodate us in the present. To not confine a history, a practice, a thought, an audience particular categories, but to give us all as much room as possible to draw alliances with artworks and each other.

December

Enter: Ma Qiusha

Still present: Zarouhie Abdalian & Elena Narbutaite

Joining Fumy Frig Sour and Joints at the end of November is From No.4 Pingyuanli to No.4 Tianqiaobeili, 2007 by Ma Qiusha (b.1982, CI). In this incredibly powerful video work, Ma Qiusha talks directly to the camera about her relationship with her mother, her background, her tortuous journey to maturity and of freeing herself from the overbearing parental pressure of having to succeed at any cost. Ma’s moment of emancipation comes in the video’s closing moments when she pulls from her mouth a hitherto unseen and now bloodied razor blade. This is the radical position of what happens when the mechanical and fleshiest part of our bodies meet. Where the humanness and the razor blade cut. It is vital for the exhibition that there is a work that gives space to the fragility of the body and the harsh realities of the world today. The work also brings the exhibition to a turning point or ‘a cut’ from process and labour to the body, language, and intimate confession. It, of course, changes the memory of the audience when turning back to look at the laser work, itself a razor sharp light cutting across the space.

January

Enter: Gordon Hall

Still present: Zarouhie Abdalian, Elena Narbutaite, Ma Qiusha

Standards, how they cross-over, how they compare other objects (coke cans, credit card, coins) become ways in measuring ‘norms’. In January, Gordon Hall (1983, US) arrives to Shimmer to make a site-specific floor work of Shimmer’s doorway. Gordon’s work shifts standards, standardised door-frames find its grounding on the floor, the width of shoulders, the height of the person are rethought, reconsidered with all the possibility to pass-through still intact.

Utilising products from the hardware store, plaster, wall filler, concrete, and house paint, Gordon offers a renewed experience of the (gendered) body through the very materials that make up our homes, “so that in the moments we encounter one another, we are actually able to see differently than the way we have been taught”.

Especially for Shimmer and PUBLICS in Helsinki, Hall made these three concrete sets for each location for the duration of the exhibition at Shimmer. Hall’s entry into the exhibition at Shimmer and at PUBLICS, marks the beginning of PUBLICS para-hosting of Shimmer over the course of 2020.

January

Enter: Ian Kiaer, Marcel Duchamp

Still present: Gordon Hall, Ma Qiusha

At the end of January, a.r. Nef, gonfable, 2013 by Ian Kiaer (1971, UK) enters into the exhibition to join From No.4 Pingyuanli to No.4 Tianqiaobeili by Ma Qiusha as well as Floor Door (for Jason and Eloise), and Set (VII), (VIII), (IX) by Gordon Hall. Ian’s work is a huge

translucent inflatable sculpture that almost fills the entirety of Shimmer. Like many of the artists in the exhibition, Kiaer uses everyday materials, but in Ian’s case perhaps was once used by someone else to make his work. a.r. Nef, gonfable can be modified by the exhibitor by inflating the work or allowing it to slump to different shapes. Modification is made patching the work with scotch tape. Typical of all his work, a.r. Nef, gonfable rests between chance and intentionality, and pushes our perception to the periphery.

Different positions, different possibilities are inherent in the exhibition format of Higher! Higher! Lower, Lower. Louder! Louder! Softer, Softer. Entering with Ian and Gordon is Coffee

Mill, 1911/1947, a work that Marcel Duchamp (b.1887−1968) created in several mediums including painting, printing and drawing. The Coffee Mill is a highlight of Duchamp’s exploration of the mechanical object as a found art object. This work exemplifies the personal and mechanical, originally made for his brother Raymond Duchamp-Villon who had requested artworks for his kitchen. In the sketch, Duchamp writes, “when I painted the

Coffee Mill it was the first time I became interested in machine forms, the arrow indicates the direction in which the machine should turn. The handle is shown in different positions, for different possibilities”. This work intersects the personal and the industrial, an intersection that becomes increasingly more present as the exhibition moves over time.

About the artists

Zarouhie Abdalian (1982, US/AR) has had shows at Berkeley Art Museum, Secession, Vienna; Wattis Institute of Contemporary Art, San Francisco; Whitney Biennial, New York; and SFMOMA San Francisco and many more. Courtesy of the artist and Altman Siegal.

Henri-Robert-Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) was a French-American painter, sculptor, chess player, and writer whose work is associated with Cubism, Dada, and conceptual art. His work is in museum collections all over the world. The works in the exhibition at Shimmer is from a private collection.

Gordon Hall (1983, US) has exhibited at SculptureCenter New York, The Renaissance Society Chicago, Brooklyn Museum New York, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Courtesy of the artist and Document.

Ian Kiaer (1971, UK) has shown work internationally including the 50th Venice Biennale; 10th Istanbul Biennial; 4th Berlin Biennale; 10th Lyon Biennale; and Manifesta 3, Ljubljana; 2006 Berlin Biennal 2006. He is represented by Alison Jacques Gallery in London, Barbara Wien in Berlin and Marcelle Alix in Paris.

Elena Narbutaitė (1984, LI) exhibited in Liverpool Biennial; Lithuanian and Cyprus Pavilion at the Venice Biennale; Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong, and Contemporary Art Center, Vilnius and more. Courtesy of the artist and PM8 Gallery.

Ma Qiusha (b.1982, CI) has exhibited at Pace Gallery, Beijing; Tai Kwun, Hong Kong; and Beijing Commune, Beijing and more.

About Shimmer

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 exhibitions are platforms such as the events program Sunday Mornings and the online mixtapes On the Waves, as a means to move through personal and public space.

Shimmer is co-initiated by curator Eloise Sweetman and artist Jason Hendrik Hansma.