Show IX, Curtain Room, 1965

Basel 2018
Show IX, Curtain Room

Upstream Gallery

Prints & Multiples
stencil
32.0 x 22.0 (厘米)
12.6 x 8.7 (吋)
Like a businessman dealing in art ideas, Boezem wore a three-piece suit and carried a briefcase with proposals for ‘Shows’ (1964-1969). He deliberately used an international term for the goods with which he travelled to museums and galleries. Boezem offered ‘ideas’, not finished sculptures or paintings but proposals presented in a catalogue which were meant to be realised only if there proved to be a demand. The proposals consisted of spatial sculptures made of air and other materials, such as cotton, wool and reeds, hardly ever used for art, for example a museum room furnished with flapping cutains as wind sculptures and warm air flows generated by fans. This extensive series made use of the fact that a museum room or gallery, as a so-called neutral space, a white cube, automatically confers credibility on the art in that setting. The proposals drawn with a felt-tip pen as simple, unpretentious thoughts for exhibitions based on concepts, are far ahead of their time. The Shows were proposals for what became known in the second half of the eighties as ‘installations’: working with the whole of the exhibition space. The space, the architecture and the function and meaning of the location are all involved. An art object is not presented as an isolated artefact placed in a room, possibly without the involvement of the maker. Rather, with this method the artist intervenes spatially and figuratively through a visual commentary. The unique, temporary situation thus created can prompt a discussion of the aesthetics (form) and function (content) of spaces where art is presented. The Shows form a coherent series of drawings, intended as proposals for installations which could be realized in a museum on order. The appearance is reminiscent of the neutrality of architectural drawings, with a frame at the bottom in which the necessary information is given. A typed explanation accompanies a number of the drawings. Show IX was realized according to the design, at the Nederlandse Beeldhouwkunst 64-69 exhibition at the Centraal Museum, Utrecht (The Netherlands), 1969. The show led directly to the film Een briesje in mei (A Breeze in May), 1974. The Curtain Room was also realized during Art Basel Unlimited 2016.