Fuck Modernism, 2012 Gerrit Rietveld Akademie, Amsterdam, 2012
Intallation in five parts. Graduation work for the Gerrit Rietveld Academy 2012. The work takes as its starting point the main building of the Gerrit Rietveld Academy, a modernist glass and concrete structure designed by architect and furniture designer Gerrit Rietveld between 1950 and 1963 and completed in 1966. Around 2000 the school was declared a historic monument, which can present problems to the students using the building as they are not allowed to intervene with the architecture, not even to put a nail in the wall. In reaction to this the work takes the form of three interventions in Gerrit Rietveld’s modernist monument. The site-specific sculptures A Monument for Mrs Rietveld, What will you offer me in return? and The Director’s Office, stood in the place of a door, a bannister and blind in the Gerrit Rietveld Academy. The detached original door, bannister and blind were taken to the new academy building that is facing the original Rietveld building. There the three standardized objects from the heydays of modernist architecture where exhibited laying in a row on the floor. Alongside this installation Three Replaced Objects was presented a sound piece; Fuck Modernism, and a leaflet in three parts providing context to the installtion with texts in which we meet the famous architect Mr Rietveld, from the perspective of the housewife, Mrs Rietveld.
The Director’s Office
Door with cut out silhouette of Gerrit Rietveld, 100 x 210 cm. Placed in the doorway of room 123, the director’s office in the Rietveld Academy building.
What will you offer me in return? Lathed bannister from maple wood, 210 x 95 cm. Placed in the stairwell of the Rietveld Academy building.
A Monument for
Mrs Rietveld A draped curtain placed in the window of the Rietveld Academy building, 210 x 420 cm. The work is visible from the new Benthem Crouwel Academy building opposite where the exhibition space in which the three replaced objects were displayed.
Three Replaced Objects A door, a bannister and a blind that have been removed from the Rietveld Academy building, and are exhibited in the new Academy buiding. The new Benthem Crouwel building is located across the courtyard, overlooking the original building by Gerrit Rietveld. In the Rietveld Academy building the three objects have been replaced with re-makes
Mrs Rietveld’s Sunglasses,
A Proposal for a Marriage and Fuck Modernism.
An exhibition leaflet with three double sided posters in letter format with each individual sheet cropped askew.
