Robbert&Frank Frank&Robbert at Fred & Ferry

Question of the day

1. 1. Should there be a text coinciding with this residency, this exhibition to be?
   2. How can artistic thinking, rethinking, overthinking be translated into text?
   3. Should everything that is visible be explained in text?
   4. Should everything that is not visible be explained in text?
   5. If a text explains an artwork, what does that say about that text?
   6. About that artwork?
   7. About the visitor?
   8. When is a step an aid and when is it a threshold?
   9. How do you share something with an audience?
   10. How do you make sincere generosity felt?
   11. Visible?
   12. How do you make sure your humour is taken seriously?
   13. In what language do you communicate?
   14. Is the artist usually the sender and the visitor the receiver?
   15. When does the receiver also become the sender?
   16. Should they?
   17. Who ensures the living interpretation of a work?
   18. Who has that power?
   19. Do you need the applause?
   20. What is the equivalent of a standing ovation in the theatre at a gallery?
   21. Don’t the scripts of a stage production and an exhibition resemble each other more than often thought?
   22. What does the stage contribute?
   23. What the exhibition?
   24. The power of the word or the power of the image?
   25. Why would you build an entire universe on stage, if it is set to disappear again after ninety minutes?
   26. Why would you show a strange collection of stuff for weeks on end?
   27. Is every thing on a plinth an artwork?
   28. Because an artist put it there?
   29. Because they made it single-handedly?
   30. Because it is unique?
   31. Because it is for sale?
   32. What is it with this aura of the object?
   33. Or is it more to do with the aura of the gallery in which is displayed?
   34. How do you give duration, life, to an object in the timeless, sterile glass bell that is the ‘white cube’?
   35. Can you charge a contemporary object with as many meaning(s) as objects that build up meaning(s) over decades, centuries of time?
   36. Do you need to be able to see the object?
   37. Is the object the artwork?
   38. Or is it the performance?
   39. The documentation?
   40. The interaction?
   41. Is it the otherworldly that the object transports you to, like a portal?
   42. How do starting point and final appearance relate?
   43. Does the mirror truly create two sides?
   44. Maybe what you are seeking, is seeking you?
   45. When are you trying too hard?
   46. Is it a matter of embracing, in the words of John Keats, the “negative capability” of man – that is, the skill to not know, to doubt, to deal with mysteries?

Robbert&Frank’s second exhibition at FRED&FERRY Gallery takes the form of a residency. The duo takes stock of their practice: what choices need to be made? Which detours still need to be explored? Which issues need to be answered? Which steps taken?

During the residency, Robbert&Frank will also present their ongoing video project “Artwork of the Month”. It started four years ago with a simple idea: one month, one work, one video of one minute, shared via a newsletter and social media. The forty-eight films can now be seen together in the exhibition space.

In addition, some special guests are invited to make a guest appearance in a number of new “Artwork of the Month”-videos.
As a visitor, you are also invited to become part of this process.

Robbert&Frank Frank&Robbert have been working for more than fifteen years on a multiform art practice at the intersection of performing and visual arts. Essential to their oeuvre is playing and failing, repeating and translating. Their work references and is inspired by (art) history, science, linguistics, popular culture and other anecdotal digressions. They often question the personal mythology of the artistic genius or gesture. Beneath their gentle, contagious humour, there is a sincere impetus to look more closely, to listen more accurately.

-Eline Verstegen