ART CITIES:Amsterdam-Ed Atkins

For his first solo exhibition ithe Netherlands, the artist transformed the  lower-level gallery in the Stedelijk’s new wing into an immersive environment of monumental video projections, soundscapes, collages, and drawings. The exhibition title, “Recent Ouija”, is a reference to the peculiar allure and uses of the Ouija board, a means of contacting spirits and demons through fragments of language. As the artist says, “To me it speaks of possession, occlusion, symbolism, belief, language and Genre”.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam Archive

Atkins’ work reflects on the unprecedented potential of today’s digital culture and its consequences for our embodied lives. His videos show talking heads, body parts, fragments of music, and graphic text animations. In them, Atkins creates a world of illusion, in which the body is a digital fantasy, an avatar. Paradoxically, the effect is to make us acutely aware of our real-world embodiment and our life in the physical world. Atkins’ hyperreal virtual world confronts us with existential questions about mortality, love and intimate relations. Many of Atkins’ works can be regarded as computer generated performances. The movements and singing/speaking voices of the “Αvatars” (the digital protagonists) are those of the artist himself. In his 2014 video installation “Ribbons”, Atkins shows a skinhead-like figure called Dave. He is a hard-drinking, chain-smoking, sentimental brute, alienated and on the way to some kind of self-destruction. With his melancholy expression and non-stop flow of talk and song, he drags the viewer ever deeper into his world, demanding empathy and violent identification. “Warm, Warm, Warm Spring Mouths” (2013) is composed of a looping sequence of rapidly changing images. A rhythmic succession of computer animations interrupted by sharp edits accompanied by piercing sound effects. The figure that links them is the same figure used subsequently in “Ribbons”, only this time wreathed in a great mass of luxuriant hair.

Info: “Recent Ouija”, Curating: Beatrix Ruf & Martijn van Nieuwenhuyzen. Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Museumplein 10, Amsterdam, Duration: 21/2-31/5/15, Days & Hours: Fri-Wed: 10:00-18:00, Thu: 10:00-20:00, www.stedelijk.nl/en