The Bone That Was a Stone

 09 October – 08 November 2015

The Bone That Was a Stone

Sara Bjarland & Müge Yılmaz

Collaborator: Rob Ritzen

We are proud to announce that cultural foundation DE KIJKDOOS is opening a new space at Veemkade 574, Wilhelmina Pakhuis.

You are cordially invited to the opening of the exhibition The Bone That Was a Stone that will take place on Friday 09 October 2015, 5:30pm at DE KIJKDOOS public space (Weesperstraat 51) and 6:30pm at Corridor project space (Veemkade 574). You are welcome to join us at one of the locations or both; we will cycle from one to the other.

The exhibition The Bone That Was a Stone explores the indistinct relation between what in human language is called natural and artificial.

Sara Bjarland and Müge Yılmaz’s artistic research questions and explores the limits of dichotomies that indicate a separation between nature and human, authentic and counterfeit, synthetic and organic. In their work, these opposing ends seem to amalgamate in an intimate, complex and unstable relation with each other. Collaborator Rob Ritzen found fossilised wooden branch on a hike on the outskirts of Brussels and wonders what it can teach us about the continuity of ecological and geological transformations.

Together Sara Bjarland, Müge Yılmaz and Rob Ritzen examine the resilient character of our surroundings and our intimate relation with it. The time we live in now appears radically different when you image the artificial plant in your office in a way already has been a plant millions of years ago. To find out how, come and see The Bone That Was a Stone.

Sara Bjarland is a Finnish artist living and working in Amsterdam. She graduated from The Slade School of Fine Art in London (2007) and attended HISK in Gent (2012-2013). Recent shows include Formations at Witteveen Visual Art Center, Amsterdam; Invasive Exotics at RAM Galleri, Oslo; CIAP Art Center, Hasselt, and solo shows at Hopstreet Gallery, Brussels and The Finnish Cultural Institute in Stockholm.

Müge Yilmaz is a Turkish artist based in Amsterdam. She graduated from the ISIA in Urbino, Italy (2011) and took part in the residency programme at de Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten (2013-2014), Amsterdam. Her latest shows include Personal Science Solution is For Me, at MoMart, Amsterdam; The Water Knows All My Secrets, Pratt Gallery, New York, and Percussive Hunter, Akbank Sanat, Istanbul.

Rob Ritzen is a philosopher and curator living in Brussels. He is a candidate PhD researcher in political philosophy at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. Aside from books he also learns from people and practice: working at different museums, exhibitions spaces and artist residencies. Apart from many solo exhibitions, he curated the group exhibition When Squares [Re]Frame Meaning and a series of exhibitions under the title We Tell Stories – An Anthology.

See the full text written by Rob Ritzen

Photos by Sara Bjarland