BeamLab Presents! presents the work of Martha Atienza, Matthias Oostrik, Irma de Vries and Arent Weevers, a selection of four audiovisual artists who, in recent years, have been supported both technically and materially by the creative platform BeamLab.
With their installations, the artists investigate, each in their own way and style, subjects such as (cultural) identity, human relationships and social changes. Martha Atienza, Matthias Oostrik, Irma de Vries and Arent Weevers work and experiment with the newest audiovisual possibilities and make the presence of the visitors indispensable; without interaction of the public their work is incomplete.
Simultaneously with the exhibition, new work by Kate Cooper, who won the BeamLab Award in 2017, will be shown at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. After winning the award, Cooper was assisted in the development of her most recent work, which will be shown in Freedom of Movement. Every year BeamLab awards the BeamLab Award to a promising resident of the Rijksakademie. The winner of 2018 will be announced on 22 November during Rijksakademie OPEN.
Martha Atienza (Manila, 1981) makes video installations that arise from her Filipino-Dutch background. With the work Our Islands 11°16`58.4″ 123°45`07.0″E, which she developed under the guidance of BeamLab, she won the Baloise Kunst-Preis at Art Basel 2017. The installation shows a sub aquatic procession of men in alienating costumes, with various religious and iconic connotations. With the choice of characters and the atypical setting, Atienza presents both a critical and humorous commentary on the state of Philippine society and on the negative implications of climate change.
In his installations, Matthias Oostrik (Amsterdam, 1980) experiments with the interaction between man and machine and the impact of digital technologies on our society. His audiovisual installation PLPL.pl (2017) challenges the audience. Surveillance cameras register and analyse deviant behaviour and show this on 50 screens. Together with composer Arnoud Traa, Oostrik also shows Untitled, a new installation that translates movement of the audience into image and sound using fluid simulations.
Irma de Vries (Wieringerwerf, 1980) works on the basis of painting, video-mapping and augmented reality and likes to take the viewer into new unknown spaces. In Nieuw Dakota she made the site-specific installation 'I'm deforming', where the viewer can deform everything around him by stepping, sitting and lying in the installation.
Arent Weevers (Ede, 1958) presents Travelling of the Heart, a virtual space of changing images and sounds that react to the viewer; the visitors are fitted with a sensor that registers their heartbeat and controls the dancing figures in the work.
BeamLab
BeamLab is a creative platform for talent development, (co-)productions and live events, which was set up by BeamSystems. BeamLab supports artists and institutes with the development of audiovisual productions, both innovatively, conceptually and artistically. BeamLab Presents! is the first exhibition of BeamLab. Every year the platform awards the BeamLab Award to a promising resident of the Rijksakademie. In 2017 Kate Cooper won the award. The 2018 winner will be announced on 22 November during the Rijksakademie OPEN.
