This website uses different types of cookies. You can read more about this in our Cookie Statement. You can indicate your cookie preferences via the "Change settings" button.

On Time, In Place

Esther Kokmeijer & Johan Nieuwenhuize

Solo exhibition

9 July – 4 September 2011
Vleeshal Zusterstraat (Map)

Curator: Lorenzo Benedetti

Kokmeijer & Nieuwenhuize, 2011 
Installation image | On Time, In Place | Esther Kokmeijer & Johan Nieuwenhuize

The Exhibition On Time, In Place is a dialogue between Johan Nieuwenhuize and Esther Kokmeijer. The work they present at Vleeshal Zusterstraat is a gathering of specific places at specific times.

Johan Nieuwenhuize: Collected Memory

Important events shape our identity by the means of mass media. While using internet and social media, watching tv or reading newspapers, we get the idea of experiencing these events without even being present at the site of the event. Fascinated by this phenomena Johan Nieuwenhuize made a collection of events shaping his identity indirectly. The fall of the Berlin wall, the New York attacks (2001), the murder of Pim Fortuyn are part of this collection. He travelled to the locations of these events years later, to make a picture of the sky on the exact date and time of the event. These pictures are merely fields of colour, abstract representations of place and time. Together they form Johan Nieuwenhuize’s Collected Memory. “The events and objects which influence my memory and identity form the basis of my work. I am trying to hold on to these things by taking pictures and by making these images into installations.” “I believe the seemingly unimportant subjects in my photographs show us not what is, but what can be.”

Esther Kokmeijer: Moment of Accuracy
A day without sunrise and a night without sunset

A solstice is an astronomical event that occurs twice every year when the Sun’s apparent position in the sky reaches its northernmost or southernmost extremes. The Arctic Circle marks the southern extremity of the polar day (24-hour sunlit day, often referred to as the 'midnight sun') and polar night (24-hour sunless night).The position of the Arctic Circle is not fixed, but directly depends on the Earth’s axial tilt.

In the exhibition On Time, In Place, Esther Kokmeijer will reflect on her presence during the winter and summer solstice at the Arctic Circle on Grimsey, a small island north of Iceland. The world at large and the connections and movements within it are the main focus of Kokmeijer her work. This stems from an urge to understand, discover, order, reshape and represent all of the world’s complexities. Geographical links often form the basis. The invisible, but continuous presence of borders, coordinates and meridians fascinates her. “In my projects I search for possibilities to lay bare the intrinsic value of places and its people and of phenomena that appear to be deemed unimportant or forgotten. Something useless or absurd can prove to have great meaning.”