sprinckelink

This exhibition by Jan Dietvorst at Foamlab is part of a series named the Solemnities follow the highlights of the Christian calendar.

This exhibition by Theun Karelse at Foamlab is part of a series named the Solemnities which follow the highlights of the Christian calendar.

This exhibition by Jan Dietvorst at Foamlab is part of a series named the Solemnities follow the highlights of the Christian calendar.

This exhibition by Jan Dietvorst at Foamlab is part of a series named the Solemnities follow the highlights of the Christian calendar.

This exhibition by Jan Dietvorst at Foamlab is part of a series named the Solemnities follow the highlights of the Christian calendar.

After the unique presentation of a group of six Asmat mask costumes from the collection of artist Jan Dietvorst, the idea surfaces to create a Christmas special of this show. One of the Jipae an Doroe is selected and placed in a forest of pine trees, as a true king. The whole of Foamlab is transformed into an evergreen forest from which the mask costume emerges. This show has become the start of a series of exhibitions at Foamlab commemorating the major feasts of the Roman Catholic liturgical calendar.

A large sheet of paper blocks the view through the window of Foamlab for passers by. Only a funny looking hole provides a glimpse of the world inside. This world sprung forth from the hands of Eva Klee, who returns for a few weeks to Foamlab. She used to have her studio there, but now she is building a town. Her residency is accompanied by a festive meal in the middle of her city, and several occasions for discussions and reflections on the work in progress.

This first show at Foamlab is probably a world premiere. From the collection of the Dutch artist Jan Dietvorst a group of six mask costumes known as Jipae and Doroe are shown together. In any anthropological collection shown world wide in museums you might see one or two of these Asmat artifacts, but a group of six is unheard of. A group like this would come together in an ‘Adoption feast’ where the relationships in family life are restored after the death of a family member.

Filmmaker Jan Cornelis Mol (1891-1954) was a pioneer of time-lapse photography, using it to record the tiny lives of micro-organisms. He wanted to show in film what otherwise would be visible only to the most tenacious gaze through a microscope. In this way the public was plunged into the life inside a droplet of water or sucked-up into the bloodstream of a frog. A highlight in his work are the images of crystallisation. Using common photographic chemicals his recordings under great magnification of the crystallisation processes revealed wonderful abstract patterns.

This Sprinckelink event at Foamlab in Amsterdam brings together sound collectors for a session of sharing the brightest sonic diamonds from their archives of recorded sounds of landscapes, animals and music. This results in an evening of crisp, flabby or spongey sound-snippets from collectors reacting to the presented audio files. Some true gems come from a Russian collection of frog and fish sound-recordings accompanied on the LP by the comments of a Russian biologist.