Riet Wijnen at P/////AKT

Artist: Riet Wijnen

Exhibition title: Conversation Four: First Person Moving

Venue: P/////AKT, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Date: November 20 – December 18, 2016

Photography: Charlott Markus, all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and P/////AKT, Amsterdam

Note: Text written by Steyn Bergs can be found here

Conversation Four: First Person Moving is the third part in Riet Wijnen’s cycle of work, entitled Sixteen Conversations on Abstraction. The organizing principle of this cycle consists of sixteen fictional conversations, sixteen accompanying works and a sculpture. The conversations and works form a conceptual space, in which the term “abstraction” is examined, formulated, constructed and deconstructed. In each fictive conversation and the accompanying work a particular subject related to the notion of abstraction is examined. The sculpture, which also functions as a diagram, maps the connections between these different conversations. This sculpture can be seen for the first time during the exhibition at P/////AKT.

The central subject of the exhibition Conversation Four: First Person Moving is ‘movement’. The fictive conversation brings together several thinkers and makers from different periods and professions whose practices deal directly or indirectly with the notion of “movement”. The philosopher Thomas Metzinger, feminist writer, teacher, and militant Silvia Federici and the association Abstraction-Création will converse about the significance of this term and its relationship with abstraction.

The conversation is a formal choreography through which movement in the broadest sense of the word is examined; from movements in society and history to movements in the brain. Movements between the inner and outer world, movements between “yes” and “no”, movements between me and we, movements between the concrete and the abstract and movements between lived experience and thinking models.

Steyn Bergs has written a short text for the occasion of this exhibition.