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Exchange Exhibitions

GALLERY FOTOMANIA, ROTTERDAM AT FOTOGALERIE WIEN

EXCHANGE, PART I

5. November 1997 – 29. November 1997

Hans Aarsman (NL), Wout Berger (NL), Henze Boekhout (NL), Paul C. Bogaers (NL), Marjoleine Boonstra (NL), Wyn Geleynse (NL), Mels Van Zutphen (NL)

Gallery FOTOMANIA has existed for 12 years and from the beginning had its main interest in the presentation of experimental, conceptual photography, new and related media and installations. The exhibition at FOTOGALERIE WIEN therefore shows this preference as well as indirectly the exhibition policy of Galerie FOTOMANIA. It also provides an insight into current, artistic photography in Holland.

Hans Aarsman, Wout Berger, Henze Boekhout: the three artists present their work together. Their idea of describing the world could be summed up in “three rules”: Mix life and photography; put the unimportant above the important; separate what you assume to see from what you see.

Paul C. Bogaers combines two or more photographs into one image or brings very different images into a coherent constellation. In this way, Bogaers tries to give his works a stronger, dynamic character. Ultimately, in the work Schlafwandlungen (Sleepwalks), which he is showing in Vienna, he is not concerned with formal or technical issues, but with the attempt to find an expression for an (in)certain attitude towards life.

Marjoleine Boonstra‘s artistic activity focuses on large-format color photographs and documentary film works. In her short film Sa Nule, she portrays people in a refugee camp in the former Yugoslavia.
The film is an impressive example of her ability to depict what is past, what is no longer. The coincidence and common origin of these two forms of expression by the same artist happen on an abstract level.

Wyn Geleynse uses himself to depict obsessive, repetitive behaviors in his installations – on endlessly repeating 16mm continuous film loops – which he simultaneously projects onto still photographs and into his contextual imagery. It is convinced that the real projection of a film onto another object becomes a wonderful metaphor for a “psychological projection” that also affects the “other” context of the photograph. Such a combination and presentation of images encourages the viewer, as a voyeur, to recreate shared fantasies, fears, and memories.

Mels van Zutphen is a photographer and filmmaker. In his photographic and film works, he explores the connections of imitation, imagination, reproduction and knowledge to reality. He searches for a re-creation of landscape and space that leads to the invention of new objects and scenes of his own universe. (Frank van der Stok)