Concordia’s Exhibition Space 2 will serve as the open studio of Lola Bezemer for a month. While the audience follows her progress live and engages in conversation with the artist, Bezemer will be constructing her installation.
Concordia’s Exhibition Space 2 will be the open studio of Lola Bezemer for an entire month. While the audience can follow her progress live and engage in conversation with the artist, Bezemer will be building her installation. Using moving textile room dividers and video projections, she explores the space and the influence that space has on the visitor.
The three different disciplines of Concordia film, theatre, and visual arts — are interconnected by Lola Bezemer in a site-specific work that she develops during her residency with us.
Agenda
July 18: Lola begins building.
September 2 – 3:30 pm: Official opening.
September 28 – 7:00 pm: Artist talk with Lola.
About Lola Bezemer
The work of Lola Bezemer is about relationships: between colour and form, between people and space, between artwork and audience, and among the visitors themselves. With her performative installations, she seeks to break down the boundaries between visitor and artwork, allowing the audience to become part of the work.
For example, in Moving Wall (2013), she moved a wall through an exhibition space, repeatedly repositioning it. One visitor later remarked that at first he felt safe with the wall behind him, but when the wall was moved, he suddenly felt exposed and observed. Why, and in what ways, does a space influence how we feel and move?
In her more recent works such as Who’s Afraid? (2017), Volte-Face (2016), and Choreography of Walls (2016), the artist uses textiles to reshape spaces.
“My work is partly shaped by ideas of presentation in the world of theatre and film. I approach the exhibition space as a stage, and the viewer as an extra on the set of their own observations. For a long time, I have dreamed of working in a theatre space. I am particularly fascinated by the mechanisms of movement behind the scenes and the fourth wall as a spatial concept. Concordia’s theatre has existed since the early 20th century. The beautiful small classical theatre is now also used as a cinema. The phenomenon of revealing and concealing is, to me, the most magical aspect of theatre, and I want to approach it in various ways: sometimes we see the light emerge from behind the curtain, sometimes another curtain follows, sometimes we see the machinery turning, and sometimes we see the audience itself.”
The title Het doek gaat op (The Curtain Rises) refers to the beginning of a theatre performance, when the opening of the curtain signals the start of the show. In the cinema, however, it is the “white screen” onto which films are projected, and in the art world a “canvas” refers to a painting. In this case, the title also directly alludes to the use of textiles in the installation.
This exhibition has been made possible with commissioning support from the Mondriaan Fund and with support from the Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds.