It’s a reduction of human evolution to a video game that someone wins by finding the escape hatch and then letting a few of his BFFs come along for the ride. Will it be Musk, Bezos, Thiel…Zuckerberg? (Survival of the Richest, Douglas Rushkoff, 2018) 

In Silicon Valley it is no longer science fiction: The end of the world as we know it. 

Often it seems a matter of simply denying or fighting to turn the tide. 

Arthur Stokvis and Wouter Klein Velderman investigate a third option in their struggle with the earth: a bitter one perhaps, but one that can bring new insights and possibilities: The tipping point is behind us. 

The end of the world as we know it will come irrevocably. There is no way back. Invite your friends, start the Sat-Nav, let’s go for the ride! Against a background of fluorescent smoke, we show solutions for possible scenarios. Everything is reminiscent of a world we know, but nothing is as it seems. 

During the exhibition there will be a program of training, lectures and disaster exercises by artists. For example, Lotje van Lieshout presents recipes for after the apocalypse with her Science Fiction Cooking Project and Bonno van Doorn shares techniques to survive in the wild. 

www.prepshopwebshop.nl

Wouter Klein Velderman
Wouter Klein Velderman (1979, Deventer) obtained his Masters in 2009 at the Sandberg Institute after completing his studies at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy, where he now teaches.

Klein Velderman’s sculptures and installations refer to a practical world of construction, industry and transport. He works with industrial plastics, which he endlessly and meticulously sews and fuses. This makes them look a bit like strange family members of objects that we encounter in our daily environment: vulnerable, delicate and sometimes a bit lost.

Klein Velderman is co-founder of the Beeld Hal Werk exhibition on Dutch sculpture and the Amsterdam based artist-run collective KAFANA. In 2014 Klein Velderman worked together with Queen of the minimal dance: choreographer Krisztina de Châtel.

Arthur Stokvis
Arthur Stokvis, 1981, Groningen, studied at Minerva Academy and the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Ghent, Belgium. His work consists of paintings and murals. In 2019 he co-initiated the exhibition space Art Bar Kippy. Currently, he is mentoring newly graduated artists as part of the Apprentice/Master programme of Kunstpodium T. In 2022, his work will be on display at Willem Twee, Den Bosch and Marres, Maastricht, among others.

In the paintings of PREPSHOP/WEBSHOP at Nieuw Dakota, icons from the prep culture come to the forefront. A threatening neon camouflage made with soot flares forms a background of doom and gloom on which rattlesnakes and other MAGA ghostly figures appear. They are stuck or hung, drawn and conjured, trapped in the layers of the painting. Harmless at first sight, these signs seem to stand for potential catastrophes in the future. Poison clouds of a post apocalyptic fever dream.