DOUBLE1#Happy Birthday

Opening: 01 February 2006

Dates: 01-28 February 2006

Location: Museum Van Nagsael, Botersloot 40* Rotterdam, Netherlands

Organization: Museum Van Nagsael
Curator: Silvia B.
www.silvia-b.com

www.cod-1-3.org
info@cod-1-3.org

At the Van Nagsael Museum, cod.1.3 (the recent group composed by the artists Loredana Longo and Giuliana Lo Porto) presents a photographic exhibition: Double1#Happy Birthday, which shows the two artists joined like siamese twins, constrained inside a single dress which limits their movements made unnatural and disarticulated from the continuous and prostrating adaptation of the bodies to each other: they can’t look into each other’s eyes, but they are forced to do the same actions and to be joined together. One’s thoughts, behaviour, movements, taste, can’t correspond to that of another man: also the most complete fusion between two people has got critical moments. The composure and the austerity in the composition of the exposure, emphasises what we can define as the tension between these two bodies.

Van Nagsael Museum (founded in 1995) has a rotating directorship: in the even months Rolf Engelen has the directorship of Van Nagsael and on even months Silvia B. is the director. The museum is entirely a co-operation in the founding and building, through which it stands on a neutral ground, where upon it is desirable to invite a third party. Each exhibition’s duration is a whole month; the first of the month is the installation day. Van Nagsael is opened day and night. The news spreads by word-of-mouth, or sent through the Museum’s postcard. The Museum has no invitations, no openings and no cash-flow. It is an easy organisation, one that is free from tedious administrative chores. It is, therefore, close to the basics of art: in the pleasure of the making, the exhibiting and the viewing. Van Nagsael is both intimate in the function of an exhibition room and public in its function as a work of art in public space. For the directors these facts are more important than the scale, however the scale has some significance, being 1:15. For them what is most important, is the Museum’s total integration in the surrounding. Making in the small vitrine an even smaller space actually enlarged the terrain of the Museum. For the artists that are invited to exhibit, what seems most important is the approach of Van Nagsael not so much as a miniature exhibition space, but more as an artwork. Half of the artwork that is to be completed every month anew. For the visitor to Van Nagsael, by chance or intention, on route through the city, the Museum is viewed alone and privately.