Brutus
Keileweg 10-18, 3029 BS
Thu–Sun 12.00–18.00
Website
Brutus, one of the largest contemporary art institutions in the Netherlands, spans 6,000 square meters in west Rotterdam. Founded in 2008 by Joep van Lieshout, it allows artists complete freedom to express their visions, resulting in bold installations and performances.
ongoing
(Open by appointment)
Sculpture Garden - open air exhibition at the sculpture garden with sculptures by Atelier Van Lieshout. Free entry.
12 Sep–14 Dec(extended until 18 Jan)
‘Er kraait geen haan naar’ –
Narges Mohammadi, solo exhibition
Mohammadi creates an almost dreamlike installation, blurring the boundaries of reality. In this monumental, site-specific work, conceived especially for Brutus’ raw basement space called 'Barbarella', she seeks to give form to long-lost childhood memories. Hollow alabaster shapes, thin enough for light to pass, stand as symbols of how scarcity can hollow lives, yet also of the strange, magical resilience that blooms in hardship.
Step into a world of memory and form, join us for the opening. We will dance the night away with a special DJ set by Narges Mohammadi herself, ZINEB and Spicy Dokha.
**12 Sep | Fri | 20.00-00.00: Exhibition Opening
**26 Oct | Sun | 15.00-17.00: Artist Talk
15.00-15.15: Entrance
15.15-15.25: Opening Speech
15.25-15.45: Tour of the Exhibition
15.45-16.00: Break
16.00-16.45: Artist Talk
16.45-17.00: Q&A with Audience
4 Jan–7 Mar
‘The Fear of Falling’ – Carlijn Kingm, solo exhibition
Carlijn Kingma dissects the housing crisis at Brutus: who is pulling the strings?
The housing crisis is considered to be the social and political problem of our time. In a large, extremely detailed drawing entitled De machinerie van de volkshuisvesting (The machinery of public housing), Carlijn Kingma depicts who the players are, what mechanisms are at work in the background, and which buttons can be pushed. This new work forms the heart of the exhibition Fear of Falling.
In collaboration with Thomas Bollen, Martijn Jeroen van der Linden, Sarah van der Giesen, and Jackie Ashkin
**4 Jan | Sun | Exhibition Opening & New Years toast, RSVP for free
ongoing
‘Verwoest Huis’ by Marjan Teeuwen
(New (semi) permanent installation)
initiated by Marjan Teeuwen and Lobke Broos/ROOF-A
The installation 'Destroyed House' is the result of a challenging plan to create a semi-permanent architectural installation to be realized in one 'undeveloped', once bricked-up space, almost completely cut off from the outside world and without any daylight. In this building, Teeuwen goes on her usual deconstructive way. To finally come to a brutalist installation, in which two uneven squares are trying to get into a more perfect position. Like a phoenix, which attempts to take a geometric form, but only partially and even for a brief moment, succeeds. An abstract minimalist rhythm, in which the feeling of order, regularity and beauty, as well as insecurity, disruption and destruction is sensible (war is not far away).
Destroyed House x Brutus is an initiative of Marjan Teeuwen and Lobke Broos/ROOF-A with a generous contribution from the Mondriaan Fund.
ongoing
(Open by appointment)
'The Engineer’s Bedroom' and 'Disco Inferno' by Atelier Van Lieshout.
'The Engineer’s Bedroom' and 'Disco Inferno' are an industrial monster with an insatiable appetite for its own products. Forty years of artistic research, experimentation and incessant output inform this Gesamtkunstwerk, which can be read as a self-portrait of Van Lieshout as obsessive system builder, seer, inventor, architect, maker of machine sculptures, engineer and shifter of boundaries.
Like all AVL works, ‘Disco Inferno’ is an exercise in self-sufficiency. It is a self-sustaining universe – a labyrinth of countless sculptures, handmade machines, hybrid engines, furniture, other artists’ work, utopias and dystopias – “all stemming from the hammer, the ultimate instrument of change”. The industrial monster is composed of giant, in-house designed and built machines, a spaghetti mash of generators, pumps and shredders, all propelled by a bizarre range of sculpted engines that can run on almost anything (vegetable oil, butter or homemade pyrolysis oil). It is a spectacle of industry and its potential in never-ending motion, yet the work’s only real purpose is to keep going – and to heat the jacuzzi in ‘The Happy End of Everything Spa’. Accompanied by the bubbling and pounding of all these machines, “as long as we have oil or waste plastic, we can keep dancing on the edge of the volcano”. JVL
With ‘Disco Inferno’, Van Lieshout continues to sculpt a new material vocabulary. Atelier Van Lieshout gained international recognition for living sculptural installations that function to assert or question independence; inventing objects, structures, machines and thematic bodies of work that annihilate the boundaries between art, architecture and design. In Van Lieshout’s distinctive language, everything is an experiment in what “could be”. AVL’s transgressive practice dissects and invents systems to flirt with power, autarky, politics, fertility, life, sex and death.
