In this clip, Tracy Metz, co-editor of the exhibition catalog, introduces the panel discussion and curator, Maartje van den Heuvel, gives a keynote speech, focusing on the the overall themes concerned with the exhibition Nature as Artifice, on view at Aperture Gallery from September 10 until October 15, 2009.
Artist Jannes Linders, whose work is in the exhibition, discusses his career and practice as a commissioned photographer working on documenting the social contexts of the new Dutch landscape. He focuses on the continuously changing landscape of Holland: how humans interact with it and how the landscape interacts with nature.
Nature as Artifice: New Dutch Landscape in Photography and Video Art, curated by Maartje van den Heuvel, is a major survey of new work by contemporary Dutch artists who, over the past twenty years, have taken contemporary Holland as their point of departure.
In keeping with the golden age of Dutch landscape painting four hundred years ago, a new visual statement on the landscape has emerged from the Netherlands. Expressed through the modern mediums of photography and video art, this new imagining of the Dutch landscape is urbanized and altered, depicting the Netherlands as the most artificial country in the world.
The exhibition features the work of Hans Aarsman, Wout Berger, Henze Boekhout, Driessens & Verstappen, Marnix Goossens, Arnoud Holleman, Gert Jan Kocken, Jannes Linders, Cary Markerink & Theo Baart, Hans van der Meer, Gábor Ösz, Bas Princen, Xavier Ribas, Gerco de Ruijter, Frank van der Salm, Hans Werlemann, and Edwin Zwakman.
On September 12, 2009, Aperture hosted a symposium at the School of Visual Arts’s new Visual Arts Gallery in New York City. Artists Jannes Linders, Hans van der Meer, Frank van der Salm, and Edwin Zwakman, presented their work, followed by a panel discussion led by writer Tracy Metz and featuring curator van den Heuvel and Alison Nordstrom, of the George Eastman House, discussing the significance and implications of the art works exhibited.
The Aperture Gallery exhibition of Nature as Artifice is made possible, in part, by the Mondriaan Foundation and the Consulate General of the Netherlands.