Incorporations
Library Nights #3
Incorporations
Thursday 13 November, 19.00
Rijksakademie
Entrance free, RSVP from 31 October
On the occasion of the exhibition 'Incorporations' by Michael Stevenson and Tomasz Skibicki at GDL525, the artist initiative GDL525 (Filippo Tocchi and Rin Suemitsu) and Rijksakademie alum Tomasz Skibicki present a talk by artist Michael Stevenson.
The talk departs from two works featured in the exhibition, 'Like a Fish Needs a Bicycle' and 'Building and Training a Demon Expulsion Team', which exemplify his ongoing investigation into the entanglement of belief, spiritual/ritual and institutional authority, while opening a view onto the broader concerns and interests that have shaped his work and practice.
Stevenson’s materially dedicated research-driven and critically engaged practice explores the interplay of economics, technology, education, and faith. Over the past three decades, he has examined what might be called multiple industrial complexes – evangelical, psychiatric and military – considering how these systems are intertwined and operate to structure belief, authority, and behavior in contemporary life. The talk approaches these systems through the material and spatial forms they produce, considering how infrastructures – whether built, imagined, or mediated – embody architecture, space, and ideology, and how these forms hold and circulate meaning, belief, and authority within contemporary culture.
Following the talk, Tomasz Skibicki and Filippo Tocchi (GDL525) will share insights on the processes of conceptualisation of the context specific restaging of the presented works for the spaces of Gouden Leeuw, the intertwinements of their practices with the residential structuralist monumental architecture and with the methodological blurring of boundaries and site-sensitive agenda of the artist-run-initiative.
Michael Stevenson
Michael Stevenson is an artist from Aotearoa, New Zealand, living in Berlin. His practice explores the interplay of economics, technology, education, and faith. Both critical and research-based, his approach engages the underlying infrastructural systems that affect and entangle these disciplines in our everyday lives. Stevenson has exhibited internationally at institutions including MoMA New York, Tate Modern London, KW Institute for Contemporary Art Berlin, SculptureCenter New York, Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo Mexico City, and the New Zealand Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. Since 2010, he has been Professor of Sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts Nuremberg.
Tomasz Skibicki
Tomasz Skibicki is an artist based in Amsterdam. His practice combines distortion, drama, and DIY culture through a workflow he calls “The Hoarder-Gatherer,” which is materially dedicated, intuition and research-driven. He produces sculptures, installations, videos, and texts based on what he likes to call “firsthand encounters with second-hand stories,” foregrounding observation, interpretation, and reuse.
GDL525
GDL525 is a curatorial office and studio located in the Amsterdam South-Eastern suburb, on the 5th floor of Gouden Leeuw - a monumental concrete complex of 400 apartments built in 1974 – initiated in 2022 and directed by Filippo Tocchi and Rin Suemitsu. The curatorial proposal experiments with possibilities of making the conditions we live and work within into materials for the staging of scenarios, exhibitions, performances and events.
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