We are pleased to announce our upcoming exhibitions and events and celebrate 10 years in our wonderful location at Auguststraße 35, Berlin. After his highly successful AQUABIT installation in 2017, Dutch artist Peter Vink returns to the gallery with a new site-specific concept.
AQUABIT II by Peter Vink
Opening Friday, 23. August 2019, 8-11pm
Installation: 23. August - 15. September 2019
Open: Tuesday - Saturday, 2-8pm
Address: Auguststraße 35, 10139 Berlin
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On the occasion of the Architecture & Art Weekend in Berlin, aquabitArt gallery shows the work of established Dutch sculptor and installation artist Peter Vink. This could not have coincided better with the anniversary of 100 years Bauhaus since Vink shares a lot of common elements with the aesthetics and ideology of the movement. Vink composes site-specific installations that suggest a new physical as well as intellectual space within the room in which they occur; by carefully balancing on the borders between art and design, functionality and visual pleasure, the work of Vink is not only to be perceived aesthetically but also conceptually.
Vink’s work oscillates between installation and sculpture, by taking into account the intricate and complicated relations that occur between his work and space. As he claims, when he makes a site- specific installation, ‘the location is his temporary studio’. And yet, he manages to break out of conventional interpretations of spatiality and adapt the space to his work rather than the opposite. His light objects, enter into a dynamic relationship with the space they occur in and one could say that the two entities co-exist in a symbiotic manner rather than obscuring each other.
The luminous installation he presents in the show consists of numerous geometrical light frames that twist perimetrically around themselves and are hanging from the ceiling. The continuous twisting, which comes at random intervals and never repeats the same combination of moves, gives the work flexibility, and yet a different sort of symmetry illusion which derives from the careful consideration of the proportional design of the luminous objects. The installation affirms its domination in the gallery by managing to create a new, imaginary ‘space within the space’. And yet, the artist’s goal is not to trick us; but rather to open up a new horizon in our understanding of architecture and challenge our perception of what art can be and how it can correspond with space.
At the same time, one cannot ignore the elements of Bauhaus in Vink’s work which are made clear through the carefully geometric design and the repetitive proportional shapes. Especially in the work series of Josef Albers, ‘Homage to the Square’, or his 1962 work ‘Stacking Tables’, the parallels between the two artists can be drawn without doubt; the close inspection of the properties of the materials and careful consideration of their functions, are the tools through which Vink experiments with movement and additionally observes the behaviour of light in space.
His contemporary implementation of these ideas into a light installation can be thought of in a wider ‘contemporaneous’ context in relation to notions of technology, industrial progress and the connections between art and science. Light would have been an impossible medium for creating art some decades ago, and therefore Vink’s art can be seen as a bridge between different époques. Vink’s work can be seen in a variety of ways, read in a variety of manners and interpreted under different lights of meaning. In any case, his work has interdisciplinary influences and never ceases to experiment with new materials and unconventional concepts.
Text by Vanessa Souli
Welcome!
Irina Ilieva & Peter Vink
SPECIAL EVENTS:
Saturday, 31. August + Sunday, 1. September 2019
Gallery aquabitArt is represented together with other institutions, galleries and initiatives with the installation AQUABIT II at the 2nd Architecture + Art Weekend in Berlin. In 2019, venues are invited whose planned exhibitions correspond to this year's topic "Beyond BAUHAUS".
The gallery aquabitArt serves as the festival center for the Architecture + Art Weekend 2019
and during the two days we will be available for information and lively discussions.
All information on the idea, participants, program and visitor guidance can be found at:
https://architecture-art-weekend.com/en/
>>> DIE NACHT IST NICHT ZUM SCHLAFEN DA ...
Saturday, 31. August 2019, 9-11pm
A concert performance from the time of the awakening of BAUHAUS
Burkhard v. Puttkamer, baritone & Alina Pronina, piano
With chansons and songs of the wild twenties, but also with snappy lyrics and an extremely avant-garde tonal language, the program of the internationally renowned song duo Puttkamer / Pronina takes us into the nights of a time in which an artistic outburst permanently prevented the city's creative minds from sleeping ...
Free admission, places limited, please register until August 30th!
Email to: [email protected]
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AQUABIT II
Peter Vink (NL), Light Installation
Opening: Friday, 23. August 2019, 8-11pm, the artist is present
Long opening hours: Saturday, 31. August + Sunday, 1. September 2019, noon - 8pm
Concert performance: Saturday, 31. August 2019, 9-11pm
Installation: 23. August - 15. September 2019
Open: Tuesday - Saturday, 2-8pm