ART ROTTERDAM: REPORT ON THE YOUNG GALLERY EVENING

In physics, every action is accompanied by a reaction. Now art is a different kettle of fish altogether, but still not impervious to the laws of Newton, so it seems. As counteraction to the mayor event Art Rotterdam in Las Palmas, Foundation ToonZaal organized the Young Gallery Evening. A route connecting ten new – and not so new – galleries between 19.00 and 22.00 on Saturday night. Visiting all ten was physically impossible but anyway: it was a good opportunity to see some of them in one go, and experience extremely different kinds of art in record time.

Foundation ToonZaal
Our little tour started at Kop van Zuid in the ToonZaal, a temporary exhibition space in the New Orleans building, where Robin Kolleman showed an exhibition by Arink, Berk & Bomans, about the fragility of the human body. Kolleman is one of the initiators of the Young Gallery Evening: “Presently there are so many new, young initiatives in this city, and they would be totally overshadowed by Art Rotterdam if we didn’t do something. But there are a lot of art lovers and collectors in the city now, so we thought it would be a good moment to give these young galleries the opportunity to show themselves.” Did they decide to do this in consultation with Art Rotterdam? “Not really, they said it could disturb their programming. But we sort of planned around it, and this was the quietest evening of the weekend.” At 20.00, Karin Arink gave a lecture about the exhibition, showcasing her work with a beamer set up on an ironing board. About a dozen people showed up to watch Arink talk about the human body, which she did with great enthusiasm and wildly gesticulating. To keep their asses from fr­­eezing on the cold concrete ground – there was no heating in the building – people seated themselves on a mattress with a giant vagina sewed into it. A fine example of what my dear colleague Elfie Tromp likes to call womb art.

Showroom MAMAAs cold as the interior of the ToonZaal was, as warm was the interior of Showroom MAMA on the Witte de Withstraat. Granted, not a new gallery at all, but Kolleman decided on including MAMA because of its young and daring programming. This exhibition was no exception, stepping inside was like entering a children’s dreamland. A toy boat on the right, a toy plane on the left, bright colors everywhere, as well as stuffed animals and deep pile carpets on the floor. We were politely asked to take our shoes off, in order to experience the exhibition to its fullest, which was called The Adventures of the Great Abnerio by the way, and was created by the artist Abner Preis from Philadelphia. In one corner, a couple of teenage girls where lying on the ground, buried in pillows, listening to stories about The Great Abnerio and other magical creatures on headphones. In another, some were drawing pictures with crayons. Cozy, is the keyword here. Others include: friendship, magic, and stories. At the center of the exhibition there was a wonderful merry-go-round which was operated by Abnerio himself, inc. bowler hat. A great guy, and a delightful exhibition. All was in perfect harmony. Hell, there even was a wooly white puppy present. (Not a part of the expo though, but ownership of a young man with red pants.) How appropriate. Because the merry-go-roud was fun and it made people feel good, I’d like to classify this expo by The Great Abnerio as feel good art.

Bob Smit GALLERY
Quite the opposite was experienced in the two galleries by Bob Smit, a twenty-eight year old art academy student operating in the centre of the city. Running themes of the art on his exhibitions: sex and violence. His main gallery was found at Eendrachtsplein and it showed works by Maarten Peerdeman (a huge yellow foam rocket launcher) and Onno Poiesz (paintings of fools and skeletons with machine guns). It was freighting and impressive. Bob Smit himself was around the corner, in his other gallery, aptly named Bob Smit GALLERY: Around the corner. Dressed in black (even his sling was black) he told us about the work he showed by Rob van der Hoeven, Cindy Jansen, Birgit Verwer and Thomas l’Anson. I commented there where a lot of guns. “Boys with toys.” He said with a big grin: “I show what I’d like to buy. This is our generation. Videogames. Violence. Guns.” And it’s going to be even more violent, he said. “You haven’t seen nothing yet. We’re going to hit ‘em hard. We’re just going to rock.” Two superb locations in the center of the city: how does he finance this? “Student grants, I borrowed money from my family, parents, art establishments. Scraped everything together pretty much. But I’m going to discontinue one gallery, and focus on international art fairs.” My guess is, we haven’t heard the last of Bob Smit and his angry young men art.

And thus we concluded our evening, drinking a couple of beers with Bob and his friends, discussing Art and Rotterdam. It was an evening of eclective artistic nature, we saw Woman (Karen Arink), Child (Abner Kleis) and Man (Bob Smit). The whole damn family.

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