Every year, Z33 gives one artist the opportunity to produce a first large solo exhibition.
Each time an artist is chosen who is ready to make the leap to the big stage. This year,
artist Frederic Geurts was selected. Geurts’ work consists of monumental, yet very fragile
structures, in which the artist goes to the extreme in exploring the boundaries of gravity
and the materialness of the constructions. One of his works was exhibited earlier at Z33.
For Super! in 2006, he created an impressive sculpture in the art centre’s garden.
Frederic Geurts’ solo exhibition will consist of new installations scaled to the available
spaces at Z33. Frederic Geurts: “I can’t make something in a void. I need a context. I like to
interact with the surroundings. Both the spatial aspects and the significance of the space
are important in this respect. In this sense I am more a designer. The way an architect is
given a tender to work from is how I create a programme for myself.
For Z33 I wanted to work on the subject of the unstable. Perhaps because the architecture
is so stately here? I went in search of the tipping moment, the (moment of) almost falling
over. In one or the other way you can find this in all of the works in the exhibition: explicitly
so as in the aluminium pane or the structure with galvanised steel wires. Perhaps less
obvious in the dance video, but it’s still there. Hence the title for the exhibition:
(un)balanced.”
Aside from the large works Frederic Geurts has created especially for Z33, there are a
number of smaller works in the exhibition which pull the exhibit out of its isolation and
place it in a larger perspective. “The whole exhibition is one big story. Next to my
sculptures I place what you could call measuring instruments in the side areas. I present a
sundial to remind us of the fact that we are orbiting the sun. I also show an axle placed
parallel to the earth to point out that we are standing at an angle to that axle. This makes
verticality something very relative.”
As a complement to the exhibition, there is a ‘cabinet’ of Associations designed by Rik De
Boe and Peter Morrens of (the) Voorkamer in Lier. Freely associating with Geurts’ artistic
exploration they present works by scientists, old masters, and contemporary artists such
as Bas Jan Ader, Piranesi en Johannes Kepler.
PRACTICAL INFORMATION
The exhibition runs from 08.11.2009 until 07.02.2010 and is open from Tuesday till Saturday
from 11am till 6pm, Sundays from 2pm till 5pm. There are weekly nocturnal visits on
Thursday until 8pm.
