‘La Pièce’ (1971), by Ger van Elk.
In 1971, Van Elk lacquered a small block of wood (7 x 9,5 cm) white, while on a boat in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, just West of Iceland, in the purest air in the world. It was exhibited in the group show ‘Sonsbeeck buiten de perken’. Van Elk considered it a “European answer” to the megalomaniac artworks that American artists like Richard Serra and Robert Smithson were showing there.
The Hut Project, ‘Un-fair’ (2009)
Bronze cast of a stone from outside the artists’ studio, worn in the Assistant Director’s shoe during installation of ‘The Fair Show’.
Simon Bérard, Untitled (Convoyeur).
Trying to establish a potential new superstition, Bérard wore a coin in his left shoe for one year. Untitled (Convoyeur) is the material witness to this performance.
Jean-Baptiste Ganne, Untitled (All that Glitters is Gold) (2007)
Installation in the water tank of the roman Villa Medici, 2007.
TAILS (Effet placebo). Between radical criticism of government organisations and simple prostitution the gap can appear extremely small. Pouring the budget that is supposedly attributed to the production of an artwork out onto the ground, would be a way of lowering the legal tender (the sign of value), of spreading it about, immobilising it. Then making it both the subject and the object of the piece(s).
HEADS (Et fait place au beau). Everything will be read as a “fountain-making”. And the multiplication of figures. Of those born from the waters and money of antiquity. Make a hundred thousand Boticellian Venuses glitter under the flow of raindrops from the natural fountain that the water tank at the Villa Medici is, like a hundred thousand wishes impossible to formulate.
Gregory Polony
Gregory Polony, ‘Neue Perspektiven’ (2013)