ART CITIES:Amsterdam-Saskia Noor van Imhoff
Zooming in and out, resizing, translating and unfolding. It’s only a short list of a formal and associative system, which Saskia Noor van Imhoff applies to existing artworks and artifacts, allocating them a new place in her landscapes of sculptures and photographs. Central to Van Imhoff’s work are the elements one usually associates with the hidden side of the Museum: conservation, reconstruction, replicas, the depot, the design of an exhibition, the architecture and the Museum lay out.
By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Stedelijk Museum Archive
By electing to give numerical titles to her artworks, Saskia Noor van Imhoff refrains from offering either associative or intrinsic information. The series of digits refer to the serial nature of her art production in a system devised by the artist herself, within which she frequently refers to previous objects or presentations. The work # +14.11 by Saskia Noor van Imhoff was acquired by the Stedelijk Museum in 2015. It is a spatial installation comprising photos, various objects, and a humidifier. For the inaugural presentation of this work at the Stedelijk, the artist is making a site-specific installation. The piece references both the architecture of the museum galleries and the collection of the Stedelijk. In her work, Van Imhoff retrieves little-known objects from the museum’s storage depot and integrates methods of conserving, classifying, and storing art into her installations.The title of the presentation is # + 23.00 the purchased work, which is entitled # +14.11 is part of this exhibition. To construct the installation the artist conducted an intensive investigation of the museum’s storage depot. The artist uses original objects, such as those she discovered in the depot, in her installations, as well as replicas. This strategy reveals one of the central themes of her work: a critique of the tenuous divide between original and copy. How do we view a work displayed in constantly changing situations and presentations? How does removing a work from its original context and using it as material for a new work affect the meaning and value of the art object? Specifically for the work at the Stedelijk, the artist has included a humidifier, a piece of equipment often used to store and help preserve objects, but which here serves to question the precarious balance of the museum climate.
Info: Curator Leontine Coelewij, Stedelijk Museum, Museumplein 10, Amsterdam, Duration: 13/2-8/5/16, Days & Hours: Mon-Thu & Sat-Sun 10:00-18:00, Fri 10:00-22:00, http://www.stedelijk.nl
