Note for the Press
For information and pictures contact Mrs Lieke Fijen via 003120 5475038 or
PRESS RELEASE
3rd announcement
Amstelveen January 26, 2012
Klee and Cobra: A Child’s Play
28/1/2012 - 22/4/2012
Alexander Rinnooy Kan to open Klee and Cobra
Children's drawings from the Henk Pijnenburg collection on view during Klee and Cobra
On 27 January, 2012, at 6:00 p.m., Alexander Rinnooy Kan, president of the Dutch Social Economic Council, will open the major international exhibition, Klee and Cobra: A Child’s Play, at the Cobra Museum. Klee and Cobra (28 January-22 April 2012) reveals the shared fascination of both Paul Klee and the Cobra artists with the wondrous, imaginary world of the child. Never before has an exhibition investigated this theme so thoroughly. In conjunction with Klee and Cobra, the Cobra Museum also presents children's drawings from the collection of former teacher and highly respected collector of contemporary art, Mr. Henk Pijnenburg.
Klee and Cobra
The exhibition includes more than 130 masterpieces by Paul Klee and 120 by the Cobra artists, including Karel Appel, Constant, Corneille, Eugène Brands, Asger Jorn and Pierre Alechinsky, brought together from international collections. Some of the works by Paul Klee, now on loan for this exhibition, have never before left Switzerland. Visitors experience how both Paul Klee and the post-war generation of Cobra artists interpreted the free expression of the child into a radical new art, which even today remains colourful, spontaneous, raw and pure. This exhibition has been made possible with the financial support of the Turing Foundation, the Mondriaan Fund, the Prins Bernhard Culture Fund, SNS REAAL Fund and the Business Club of the Cobra Museum. Klee and Cobra has been organized in collaboration with the Zentrum Paul Klee in Bern and the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebaek, Denmark.
Children's drawings from the Henk Pijnenburg collection
In the 1960s and 1970s, at the St. Sylvester School in Helmond, Henk Pijnenburg introduced what was at that time a trailblazing teaching method. This inspired teacher took his pupils to museums and exhibitions, introducing them to all kinds of art, not to have them reproduce them in some academic fashion, but to stimulate their own creativity. Pijnenburg’s method resulted in countless exceptional drawings - powerful, clear and completely unaffected. Fifty highlights from this collection, created between 1964 and 1973, have been selected for this exhibition.
Information for the Press
Additional information and digital images are available through Heidi Vandamme, T +31 (0)20 547 50 48, or by email at . Heidi is at the Cobra Museum on Tuesdays and Thursdays and can be reached at +31 (0)6 295 32 686 on other days.
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PRESS RELEASE
2nd announcement
Amstelveen December 5, 2011
Klee and Cobra: A Child’s Play
28/1/2012 - 22/4/2012
Klee and Cobra: the Cobra Museum and the University of Amsterdam
Academic research and public programmes in a psychological perspective
In the context of the international exhibition, Klee and Cobra: A Child’s Play (28 January - 22 April 2012), the Cobra Museum will be working together with the Developmental Psychology Programme Group of the University of Amsterdam (UvA). The collaboration includes research carried out by UvA researchers, in which visitors to the exhibition will be asked to participate, as well as public programmes by both the museum and the university. Both the research and the public programmes are linked to the theme of the exhibition: the shared fascination of artist Paul Klee (1879-1940) and the Cobra artists (1948-1951) for the wondrous world of children's imaginations and the major influence that Klee had on the Cobra artists. The addition of this developmental psychology perspective reveals connections between art and psychology in the context of the exhibition. In this respect, the Cobra Museum moreover responds to growing interest in childlike expression and psychology in general in society today. This programme has in part been made possible with the support of the SNS REAAL Foundation.
ResearchIn collaboration with researchers in the Developmental Psychology Programme Group at the UvA, two areas of research have been developed, both associated with the theme of the exhibition, and in which exhibition visitors will be asked to participate.
Research Lab at the Cobra Museum and in Schools
The first of the two research projects is related to the theory of Representational Redescription developed by the influential developmental psychologist, Annette Karmiloff-Smith. This theory claims that development of knowledge progresses from an implicit to an explicit level. A young child, for example, has an implicit, less flexible concept of mankind than an older child. Based on this theory, researchers predict that explicit knowledge about a subject influences flexible thinking about that subject. For this research, a separate A Child's Play laboratory will be set up at the Cobra Museum. It will be open to visitors on Wednesday afternoons from 1:00 to 4:30 p.m., and on Sundays from 11:00 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., from February 1st through March 31, 2012, Anyone eight years or older can participate. Taking part consists of carrying out a few simple tasks and lasts about 20 minutes. The tasks aim to challenge participants to think and reflect flexibly in diverse ways, after listening to a story, by answering a few questions and making drawings. The same procedure will be followed at schools, where children in the fifth to eighth years of school will participate.
Online Experiment
An online experiment will also be set up, which will compare our subjective experience of works by Paul Klee and those made by children. The research is based on a model developed by Vanessa Hagtvedt & Henrik Patrick (2008), which measures the perception and evaluation of art based on cognitive and affective aspects. Participants will be asked to assess works by Paul Klee and children's drawings, based on five aspects: skill, originality, power, exciting character and beauty. Also, by charting several demographic aspects of the participants, insights can be made into differences between specific groups. The online experiment is available during the entire exhibition period, from 28 January through 22 April, at www.cobra-museum.nl/psychology.
The results of both research projects will be presented at www.cobra-museum.nl at the end of the exhibition.
Public Programme
A variety of additional public activities will also be offered during the exhibition, in addition to the research projects with the UvA. These also focus on the psychological aspects of the exhibition theme. They include a series of lectures and an interactive weblog with stories, insights and backgrounds embracing the theme of children’s drawings. The lecture series includes Dr. Ad Dudink, former instructor in developmental psychology at the UvA, who will examine the history of the teaching of drawing in the Netherlands, highlighting the periods when Paul Klee and the Cobra movement were at their peak. Folkert Haanstra, extraordinary professor at the University of Utrecht, will also be a speaker. Professor Haanstra is an expert on learning effects in the expressive or plastic subjects in education. The blog is developed under the editorial supervision of Ad Dudink, and will be available from February 1st at www.cobra-museum.nl/psychology. Everyone is invited to respond to the authors’ statements and postings.
An overview of all the activities for the public during Klee and Cobra will be available at the end of December at www.cobra-museum.nl.
Klee and Cobra: A Child’s Play
Klee and Cobra: A Child’s Play investigates the influence that Paul Klee (1879-1940) had on the Cobra movement (1948-1951), seen from their shared fascination for the liberating simplicity, the fantasy, the purity and the colourful richness of children’s drawings. The exhibition shows both the similarities and the differences in working methods and concepts regarding the role and the meaning of the child, for both Klee and Cobra. This is expressed, for example, in such themes as the imagination of the child, fantastic animals, masks and grotesque faces, acrobatics and aggression between children. The exhibition allows the visitor to experience how modern artists such as Paul Klee, Asger Jorn and Karel Appel translated the world of children's experience into radical new art, which continues today to be colourful, expressive, spontaneous, raw and pure. In all, about 130 Paul Klee masterpieces (oil paintings, works on paper, mixed media works and sculptures) and 120 highlights from Cobra (represented by Appel, Constant, Corneille, Eugène Brands, Jorn, Pierre Alechinsky and more) have been brought together from several collections from different countries.
Klee and Cobra is a joint initiative of the Cobra Museum, Zentrum Paul Klee in Bern and the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebaek, Denmark.
Information for the Press
Additional information and digital images are available through Heidi Vandamme, T +31 (0)20 547 50 48, or by email at . Heidi is at the Cobra Museum on Tuesdays and Thursdays and can be reached at +31 (0)6 295 32 686 on other days.
Klee and Cobra will be on public view from Saturday, 28 January, 2012. An Advance Viewing for the Dutch and foreign press will be held on Thursday 26 January, 11:00 a.m.- 1:00 p.m..
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PRESS RELEASE, Amstelveen November 18, 2011
Exhibition: Cobra Art Prize Amstelveen
‘Nathaniel Mellors - The Nest’
9 December 2011 - 4 March 2012
The Cobra Museum of Modern Art presents Nathaniel Mellors - The Nest, in which new work by Nathaniel Mellors is merged with works from the Cobra Museum collection in a unique installation. It is the fourth exhibition by a Cobra Art Prize Amstelveen winner and is accompanied by a limited edition artist's publication of the same title. Nathaniel Mellors has developed this multifaceted project in collaboration with artist Chris Bloor (b. 1962, works in Leeds, UK).
The exhibition will be opened on 9 December, 2011, by Pierre Audi, artistic director of the Nederlandse Opera and artistic director of the Holland Festival. The Cobra Art Prize and the accompanying statement by the jury will be presented to the artist at the opening event.
Nathaniel Mellors (b. Doncaster, UK, 1974; lives and works in Amsterdam) has rapidly gained an international reputation with idiosyncratic works in which the complex relationship between language and power is a recurrent theme. His diverse productions involve absurdist scripts, film, video, animatronic sculpture and reprography. Mellors is uniquely able to lead us into a world of artificial images that - sometimes unintentionally - express our darkest urges. He has recently developed several other projects in which works by other artists have also been included.
Nathaniel Mellors - The Nest is a mis-en-scène in which new video sequences, photograms, glowing sculptures and sculptures from the museum’s collection nest together within the exhibition space. The artist has conceived of this constellation of works as a single installation exploring the theme of objectification in different ways; in the Ourhouse series texts become sculptures and ideas become physical problems for the protagonists. Mellors has made a correspondent selection of Cobra works with a focus on the relationship between language and sculpture.
The installation ‘The Nest’ includes four specially edited film sequences from Mellors’ Ourhouse series (including the new, eponymously titled ‘Ourhouse - The Nest’) housed within newly constructed sculptures. In the Ourhouse film series we witness developments in the lives of the Maddox-Wilson family, whose home is occupied by a male figure known as ‘The Object’. The family cannot recognise ‘The Object’ as a human being; they struggle to speak in its presence. The Object hijacks language inside the house through a process of eating and regurgitating the family’s books. The texts it consumes influence the story.
Nathaniel Mellors - The Nest is accompanied by a limited edition artist's publication of the same title, which includes texts by Nathaniel Mellors, Dan Fox and Dominic van den Boogerd. The book was designed by Chris Bloor.
The Cobra Art Prize Amstelveen is awarded every two years to an artist living in the Netherlands who works innovatively and seeks experimentation. The prize includes a monetary award of € 10,000 and an exhibition and accompanying publication at the Cobra Museum of Modern Art in Amstelveen. The prize is an initiative of the municipality of Amstelveen and the Cobra Museum of Modern Art. The Cobra Art Prize Amstelveen has previously been awarded to Joost Conijn (2005), Johannes Schwartz (2007) and Gijs Frieling (2009).
The Cobra Art Prize Amstelveen Foundation
Board of Directors: Marieke Sanders-ten Holte (chair), Mels Crouwel (Benthem Crouwel Architects), Eelco Dijk, Els Ottenhof (executive director, Cobra Museum of Modern Art).
Members of the Jury, 2011: Dominic van den Boogerd (director, De Ateliers, chair), Xander Karskens (curator, De Hallen), Saskia van Kampen (curator Museum Boijmans van Beuningen) and Katja Weitering (artistic director, Cobra Museum of Modern Art Moderne Kunst).
PRESS RELEASE, Amstelveen October 11, 2011
Klee and Cobra: A Child's Play
28.01 2012 - 22.04 2012
Paul Klee and Cobra in international exhibition at the Cobra Museum
From 28 January through 22 April 2012, the Cobra Museum will present Klee and Cobra: A Child's Play. The exhibition reveals the influence that Paul Klee (1879-1940) had on the Cobra movement (1948-1951), seen from the perspective of their shared fascination for the wondrous world of children's imagination. This theme has never before been so thoroughly investigated in an exhibition. In all, 120 masterpieces by Paul Klee (oil paintings, works on paper, mixed media works and sculptures) and about 100 highlights by the Cobra artists (Karel Appel, Constant, Corneille, Eugène Brands, Asger Jorn, Pierre Alechinsky and others) are being brought together from international collections. This offers visitors a unique opportunity to view the similarities and the differences between Klee and Cobra. This exhibition has been made possible with the support of the Turing Foundation, the Mondriaan Foundation, the Prins Bernhard Culture Foundation, SNS REAAL Funds and the Business Club of the Cobra Museum.
Klee en Cobra
In the spring of 1948, the Amsterdam Stedelijk Museum, under director Willem Sandberg, held a major exhibition of the work of Paul Klee, the first in the Netherlands. The press responded enthusiastically. Soon thereafter, the Stedelijk held the first exhibition of the CoBrA group, young, largely Dutch painters and poets. This time, the media was merciless: it was just messy blobs and worse; ‘My little boy can do that too’. The public, however, visited the exhibition in droves.
Exhibiting Paul Klee and Cobra together may not at first seem self-evident. The young Dutch Cobra artists only became fully acquainted with the work of Paul Klee in 1948, with the exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum. The Swiss artist had died eight years before. His work nonetheless made a great impression on both the Dutch and the non-Dutch Cobra artists.
The imaginary world of the child as a shared source of inspiration
Paul Klee and the Cobra artists all shared a genuine fascination for the liberating simplicity, the fantasy, the purity and the rich colour of children's drawings. As a boy, Klee had been fervently enthusiastic about drawing, and after rediscovering his own childhood drawings in 1902, he would refer back to them for the rest of his life. He also encouraged his son Felix, born in 1907, to draw. This exhibition includes original childhood drawings by both Paul and Felix Klee, which have never before been shown outside Switzerland.
The Cobra artists were equally enthusiastic about collecting children's drawings and regularly worked with children. Eugène Brands' daughter Eugénie was something of a muse for him, and the exhibition presents a number of handsome examples. The Cobra artists also identified with the principles and the childlike spontaneity of the work of Paul Klee. They worked in a similar way. The power of their work in the early Cobra years can be largely credited to an unpretentiousness and a directness that is often seen in children. This exhibition shows both the similarities and differences in working methods and ideas about the role and the meaning of the child, for both Klee and the Cobra artists. This is expressed in such themes as the imagination of the child, fantastic animals, masks and grotesque faces, acrobatics and aggression amongst children themselves. The Cobra artists' response to the work of Paul Klee is also revealed in detail.
International collaboration
Klee and Cobra has been organized by an international team of curators from museums in Switzerland, Denmark and the Netherlands: the Zentrum Paul Klee in Bern (where the exhibition was held from 25 May-4 September 2011), the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebaek (30 September 2011-8 January 2012) and the Cobra Museum of Modern Art in Amstelveen (28 January-22 April 2012).
Important works have been made available on loan for this exhibition from museum collections, as well as a number of private collections. In addition to drawings made when Paul Klee was a child (aged four and six) and those of his son Felix, the exhibition gives an excellent overview of Klee's entire oeuvre, until and including 1940, the year he died. A number of large works painted on jute are exceptional: La belle jardinière and Love Song at New Moon, both from the Zentrum Paul Klee and painted by Klee in the 1930s, and Summer Landscape, from 1918, from the collection of the Triton Foundation. The 1949 oil painting, Hip, Hip, Hoorah!, by Karel Appel, from the collection of the Tate Gallery in London, and Asger Jorn's monumental canvas, Letter to my Son, painted in 1956-1957 (also in the Tate collection), are amongst the highlights of the exhibition.
Catalogue
The Dutch-language catalogue, Klee en Cobra. Het begint als kind, is published by Ludion. The English and German editions are published by Hatje Cantz Verlag. The catalogue is 224 pages, with 269 illustrations, 246 in full colour, available in paperback or hard cover.
Associated Programmes
The University of Amsterdam (UvA) will be collaborating with the Cobra Museum for research purposes during the exhibition, resulting in an extensive programme covering the psychology of children's drawings.
This programme has been made possible with the support of SNS REAAL Funds.
Children's Programme
Together with the Zabawas Foundation, a complete educational and creative programme for children is being developed.
PRESS RELEASE, Amstelveen September 22, 2011
Studio Toscane
Karel Appel - Roberto Barni
01.10 2011 - 15.01 2012
The Cobra Museum presents Studio Toscane with sculptures, a ceramic installation and a number of paintings by Karel Appel created in Tuscany in the period 1989-1999. At the same time new and existing work will be shown by the Tuscan painter and sculptor Roberto Barni.
In Tuscany, man, animal, nature, past and present are inextricably linked.
By means of Karel Appel’s (1921-2006) and Roberto Barni’s (1939) work, it is explained how artists, inspired by rich Tuscan cultural history, create work that is both contemporary and traditional: the best of both worlds. Both Appel’s and Barni’s work is characterised by a tension between traditional and contemporary, between culture and nature.
Works by Karel Appel in the exhibition include sculptures from two series and an exceptional ceramic installation. The majority of the works are owned by the Italian collector and viticulturist Giulio Baruffaldi. Appel produced ten large and medium-sized sculptures for specific locations on Baruffaldi’s estate. Eight bronze sculptures were taken from their permanent location in Tuscany for the first time for this exhibition. The second series was created on Appel’s estate, Villa Licia. In addition, a number of sculptures, which served as models for the bronze versions, will be on show, borrowed from the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam collection, resulting in both original and bronze versions of the sculptures being seen together.
One original sculpture originates from the Cobra Museum collection. A total of 20 of Karel Appel’s objects are included and a small number of landscape paintings. The works have never been publicly displayed in this composition.
Works from the 1990s by Roberto Barni are included, although he will primarily supply new works especially created for the exhibition: sculptures, drawings and paintings. Despite the fact that Appel and Barni are two completely independent artists, a connection can be made between their works. In the 1990s, Barni, just like Appel, used objects from daily life to express the relationship between man and culture. In addition he shares with Appel the approach to the continuation of history and tradition in the present, in contemporary art. Past and present, nature and culture are powerfully displayed throughout Roberto Barni’s work. Barni has been living and working in Tuscany for many years.
The accompanying catalogue provides further insight into the aspects of Tuscany that had special meaning to Appel and Barni, and into the meaning of Tuscany for other modern and contemporary artists who had or still have a studio in Tuscany. A number of them are represented at the exhibition with a single work: Marino Marini (1901-1980), Jan Dibbets (1941) and the Irish artist Janet Mullarney (1952).
Studio Toscane is a concept by guest curator Werner van den Belt, also the author of the catalogue.
After Studio Toscane, the bronze sculptures by Karel Appel will be on display during the exhibition Hof van Appel in the Cobra buiten (‘Cobra in the Open’) sculpture garden, which will open in March 2012 in Kasteel Keukenhof. Cobra in the Open is a collaboration between the Cobra Museum and Kasteel Keukenhof in Lisse, supported by the BankGiro Loterij. Hof van Appel will be the first of three annual exhibitions.
Media Partner AVRO will devote three episodes of the television programme Kunstuur to Studio Toscane and the exhibition Hof van Appel. The first programme will be broadcast on 19 November.
Studio Toscane
Tuscany is rich in cultural history. As the centre of the Renaissance this region produced famous artists. Tuscany was also the cradle of humanism and a major international scientific hub. Currently Tuscany is primarily known for its excellent conservation of the past, in terms of nature and culture. What is less well-known is that from the mid-1970s Tuscany was the breeding ground for famous contemporary artists, including Daniel Spoerri, Niki de Saint-Phalle, Fernando Botero, Jan Dibbets, Karel Appel and Gerhard Richter. Local artists also contribute to artistic developments with their work. The most famous ones include Marino Marini, Roberto Barni and Sandro Chia (1946). In Tuscany artists not only experience nature and culture, they draw a lot of inspiration from the old landscape and the rich cultural history, which are so clearly noticeable in many locations.
Karel Appel in Tuscany
In 1989 Appel settled in Tuscany and worked there in the summer months from 1989 to 1999. The diversity of the works he produced there is great, to this day there is no complete overview of the work from Tuscany. Between 1991 and 1995 Appel regularly worked on the estate of his neighbour, the viticulturist Giulio Baruffaldi. Here ten large and medium-sized sculptures were created based on a concept used previously by Appel. i.e., the application of found objects. On Baruffaldi’s estate he found materials from viticulture: ploughs, stakes used to support bunches of grapes, bellows, old wooden barrels and cartwheels. He changed the meaning of the materials by arranging them in a specific way and by adding self-made plaster components, which can be identified as human and animal heads. Appel would later make bronze versions of the statues; eight bronze statues from this series can still be found on the estate, in the locations chosen for them by Appel. He kept the original statues made from the found materials and a number of them ended up in the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam collection. The bronze sculptures from the Buffaldi collection will leave the estate for the first time.
On his own estate a second series of sculptures was created, with excess household goods. In Villa Licia, Appel found doors, window frames, wheels, ladders, as well as lids of discarded wine barrels. During assembly a colour accent was sometimes added, but on the whole these sculptures also maintained their simple original condition. After a visit to a carnival depot in Viareggio human limbs were processed in the constructions, such as arms or fists, as well as donkey’s or bird’s heads. From that time Appel referred to them as ‘stake sculptures’. The Fountain statue from 1992, which was set up in 2001 as a bronze fountain on the square in front of the Cobra Museum, also belongs to this series. Appel donated the original to the museum in 2004.
Appel created the first paintings which clearly are based on Tuscany in 1990: landscapes with rolling hills, trees as well as human figures and animals. Four years later Nobody’s Puppets (1994) would follow, in which the landscape is abstracted into a jumble of coloured lines. The series appears to be the beginning of a much larger one from 1995. After 50 years Appel returned to painting reality. In approximately 60 works he painted the view from his Tuscan studio, all with the same hill and the same cypresses. An important aspect is also that he allows the achievements of Cézanne and Van Gogh into these paintings.
In 1995 Appel developed an unusual installation made up of ceramic objects selected in a local business: dining room tables, classical sculptures, fire baskets. He had the objects sprayed white and covered them with blue painting: human and animal figures and abstract shapes. Later he would design chairs to go with them. Appel created the installation, christened Le Muse, for a large space on Baruffaldi’s estate. The installation illustrates Appel’s sense of ceremony. His affinity for ‘rituals and celebrations’ had a sequel two years later when on the night of 21 June, a mythical date for natural religions, he staged a performance whereby the last leftover household goods were stacked up high and set on fire. During the burning ceremony, six of Appel’s poems translated into Italian, were recited. The large ceramic installation is included in the exhibition. The performance was filmed and will be shown.
Roberto Barni
Roberto Barni’s (1939) work is stylistically diverse. For the most part, his work follows artistic trends: pop art in the 1950s and 1960s, conceptual art in the 1970s and figurative art in the 1980s and 1990s. However, to him art-historical developments represent a means and not an end. The main theme in his work is his humanistic vision. Doubts, the tragic and the quest for balance with nature also play a part. From the mid-1980s his research into humanity was symbolised by the walking man, who develops into his alter ego. Barni’s work shows similarities with art from antiquity (Greeks and Etruscans) as well as with modern art (Alberto Giacometti). Barni does not view the past as completed but sees it continuing into the present, a process of which he also forms part.
Catalogue
Ludion will publish the catalogue Studio Toscane/Karel Appel - Roberto Barni. Execution: 152 pages, trilingual (NL/IT/UK). Text: Werner van den Belt. Photography by Aurelio Amendola, among others.
Design: Brigitte Slangen. ISBN 978-94-6130-030-0.
Public events
As part of the exhibition, lectures and tours will be organised and a creative arrangement will be offered in collaboration with the Karel Appelhuis BG. In addition a hunt will be organised for children and workshops will be held during school holidays. For further information please go to www.cobra-museum.nl.
See also www.kabg.nl
MuseumApp
In the MuseumApp launched on 8 September, a Karel Appel route is included in Amsterdam, created by the Cobra Museum. The MuseumApp is an iPhone application.
PRESS RELEASE
Nathaniel Mellors
Winner 2011
Cobra Art Prize Amstelveen
Winner Announced
The executive committee of the Cobra Art Prize Amstelveen Foundation is pleased to announce that the 2011 Cobra Art Prize is being awarded to visual artist Nathaniel Mellors (born 1974, Doncaster, UK, lives and works in Amsterdam). The Cobra Art Prize was established in 2005 and is awarded every two years. It includes a monetary award of € 10,000, a publication and an exhibition. The Cobra Art Prize Amstelveen is awarded to an artist living in the Netherlands who produces innovative work that attests to engagement and experiment. Previous recipients of the price have been Joost Conijn (2005), Johannes Schwartz (2007) and Gijs Frieling (2009).
In 2011, the jury comprised Dominic van den Boogerd (director of De Ateliers, Amsterdam), Xander Karskens (curator for De Hallen, Haarlem), Saskia van Kampen (curator for the Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum, Rotterdam) and Katja Weitering (artistic director Cobra Museum of Modern Art, Amstelveen).
The jury has selected Nathaniel Mellors because of his completely unique visual world and the powerful impact that his work has on its viewers. His inventive cross-fertilizations between visual art, music, theatre and text are consistent with the multidisciplinary engagement of the Cobra artists.
Award Presentation and Nathaniel Mellors Exhibition
Nathaniel Mellors will be exhibiting at the Cobra Museum in Amstelveen from 10 December 2011 through 4 March 2012. The exhibition will open on Friday, 9 December, at 5:30 PM. This exhibition will be part of Mellors' extensive ongoing project, Ourhouse, previous versions of which have been presented at De Hallen in Haarlem and other locations. As in earlier versions of the project, Mellors will be combining sculptural elements with serial video works in a manner completely unique to him, offering a personal, satirical perspective on television drama.
Nathaniel Mellors
Nathaniel Mellors creates absurdist scripts, psychedelic theatre, film, video, performance, collages and sculptural works in which the distinction between meaning and incomprehensibility is put to the test. A returning theme in his multisided work is the complex relationship between language and power, which he incorporates in narratives that betray a tendency to satire and the grotesque. In addition to his visual work, Nathaniel Mellors is also bass guitarist in the group, Advanced Sportswear, and is co-founder of Junior Aspirin Records.
Nathaniel Mellors studied at Oxford University's Ruskin School of Fine Art (1996-1999) and the Royal College of Art in London (1999-2001). From 2007 to 2009, he was a resident at the Rijksakademie of Fine Art in Amsterdam. His upcoming exhibitions include ILLUMInations, at the 2011 Venice Biennial. Recent exhibitions include Nathaniel Mellors: Ourhouse (I.C.A., London, 2011); The British Art Show 7: In The Days of The Comet (The Hayward Gallery, London, touring the UK in 2011); Giantbum (Altermodern: Tate Triennial, 2009 and Stedelijk Museum Bureau, Amsterdam); The Time Surgeon (Lyon Biennial, 2007; ArtSway, UK, 2007; South London Gallery, 2009; Stedelijk Museum CS, Amsterdam, 2008); and Profondo Viola (Matt’s Gallery, London, 2004).
Members of the Board of Directors of the Cobra Art Prize Amstelveen are Ms. Marieke Sanders-ten Holte, chair, Ms. Els Ottenhof, Mr. Eelco Dijk and Mr. Mels Crouwel.
PRESS RELEASE, Amstelveen October 5, 2011
Cobra in the open
‘Hof van Appel’ at Kasteel Keukenhof
22.03 2012 - 21.10 2012
The new sculpture garden Cobra in the Open is to open in the attractive surroundings of Kasteel Keukenhof next spring. The garden is an initiative of the Cobra Museum of Modern Art in collaboration with Kasteel Keukenhof in Lisse. The project is supported entirely by the BankGiro Loterij. With Cobra in the Open the Cobra Museum will organise exhibitions of Cobra sculptures over a three year period. Many of the selected works by Cobra artists were intended to be installed in a natural environment. Cobra in the Open is in keeping with the ambition of Kasteel Keukenhof to become a multifaceted cultural park.
The BankGiro Loterij will enable three editions of Cobra in the Open. As befits the motto of the ultimate cultural lottery, this new sculpture garden will enable a wide group of people to become acquainted with the cultural heritage of Cobra in an accessible way. Particularly valued is the original combination of collaborative partners and the attractive, unique location of the castle in the vicinity of the world-famous flower exhibition Keukenhof.
‘Hof van Appel’
The first sculpture exhibition, entitled Hof van Appel (from 22 March - 21 October 2012) is the first of three editions of Cobra in the Open. Exhibited in the gardens adjacent to Kasteel Keukenhof and a stone’s throw away from the world-famous flower exhibition Keukenhof, will be some large sculptures by Karel Appel. In 2013 and 2014 works will be exhibited of other Cobra artists. Which these will be has yet to be decided.
The sculptures for the first exhibition Hof van Appel will be moved from the Studio Toscane exhibition at the Cobra Museum to Cobra in the Open. Karel Appel sculpted these works in Tuscany, where he was inspired by the sunlight and the landscape. For this series of sculptures he used winegrowing objects he had found on the estate of his neighbour, art collector and wine grower Giulio Baruffaldi. The sculptures of the ‘found objects’ were then cast in bronze. Appel produced ten large and medium-sized sculptures for specific locations on Baruffaldi’s estate. Eight of these sculptures were taken from their permanent location in Tuscany for the first time for this exhibition. Also on display are several surprising ceramics by Appel. In Cobra in the Open these works will soon all be exhibited in the internationally renowned Dutch light.
‘Studio Toscane’
From 1 October 2011 to 15 January 2012 a selection of Karel Appel’s Tuscan sculptures, together with a few landscape paintings and other contemporary art created in Tuscany, will be on display in the Studio Toscane exhibition in the Cobra Museum.
Avro
Media Partner Avro will devote three episodes of the television programme ‘Kunstuur’ to Studio Toscane and the exhibition Hof van Appel. The first programme will be broadcast on 19 November.
Public events
During the Hof van Appel exhibition several public events will be organised with musical and culinary aspects and a touch of Italy. An educational package has also been developed for both individual visitors and school groups. Details of the programme will be published at a later date on www.cobrabuiten.nl (site under construction).
The MuseumApp will include a Cobra in the Open route for Kasteel Keukenhof. The MuseumApp is an iPhone application (soon also available for Android telephones).
Collaborative partners
The Cobra Museum for Contemporary Art in Amstelveen has a unique collection of art created by members of the international Cobra movement. The collection is permanently on display in changing exhibitions. The museum also ensures that the intellectual heritage of the Movement’s artists is kept alive. Over a period of fifteen years, the museum has developed into a centre of expertise on collections. Besides presentations of the Cobra legacy, the museum also organises prominent exhibitions of contemporary art.
Kasteel Keukenhof is situated in the heart of the bulb region of the Netherlands, in the middle of the charming Keukenhof Estate, just outside Lisse, opposite the flower exhibition of the same name. Over 200 hectares of woodland, meadows, and a park with more than 18 monuments. The radical restoration of the castle will be completed in 2011. The adjacent historical buildings and surrounding park have also been restored to their former glory. With the development of the house and gardens, Kasteel Keukenhof has contributed significantly to the preservation of the entire estate, combining three key values: art, culture and flora. Interesting detail: in the 17th century the estate also had a sculpture garden where the owner exhibited national and international works of art.
