ART-PRESENTATION: Anouk Kruithof-¡Aguas!
Anouk Kruithof was born in 1981 in the Netherlands and is based in New York. Her work explores and questions the philosophy and physicality of photography as a medium. Her multi-layered, approach takes the form of photographs, installations, artist-books, texts, sculptures, ephemera and performances and conceives of the image as both a material and conceptual binder.
By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Foam Archive
Anouk Kruithof has a fascination for the online representation of societal issues, she subjects these to critical scrutiny by extracting existing imagery from the digital sphere, and translating the photographs into her own three-dimensional visual idiom. Hel solo exhibition “¡Aguas!” is on presentation at Foam as part of the exhibition series Next Level, centers on Kruithof’s recent investigation into the online representation of urgent societal themes. Over the past few years the artist collected circulating images related to issues like privacy, government surveillance, pollution and climate change. For the series “#Evidence” (2015-17) she visually dissected the way various American organisations present themselves via Instagram. The artist took inspiration from the book “Evidence” by Larry Sultan and Mike Mandel, which, when published in 1977 was ahead of its time in questioning photography-as-art and ideas of authorship. Sultan and Mandel used photographs they selected from the archives of various institutions throughout the west coast of the US, mixed together and shown in a sequence of autonomous images that formed a visual essay predicting America’s ambiguous future. Their book also served as a demonstration that the meaning of a photograph is conditioned by the context in which it is seen. An extensive research into the complete Instagram output of 27 corporations, 15 government agencies and 11 institutions lead to a selection of around 650 screenshots that form the source of the whole new body of work. In each of the various types of work that Kruithof derived from this source material she twists, alters, stretches and combines the material in different ways. By doing so Kruithof claims the imagery as her own and robs it of its promotional intent, instead adding new, varying intentions and messages. In a fashion quite similar to Mandel and Sultan, a new merit arises, this time a less concrete, less stable and less transparent one. Kruithof made a variety of works such as sculptures and photographed analogue screenshot-montages re-interpreting the imagery in a search for new value and new meaning. In her latest work, Kruithof questions the aesthetical way the causes and consequences of climate change are depicted online. This series was commissioned by Foam and created especially for this exhibition. In addition to her recent work, the exhibition presents a complete overview of her publications, giving insight into the versatility and development of her professional practice.
Info: Foam, Keizersgracht 609, Amsterdam, Duration: 17/11/17-20/1/18, Days & Hours: Mon-Wed & Sat-Sun 10:00-18:00, Thu-Fri 10:00-21:00, www.foam.org
