For the first weeks of November we decided to slightly alter our programming structure. In a series of 3 one-week presentations we shift up the pace and narrow the focus on a singular artwork every week. To begin this series, titled ENCOUNTERS, artist Gerald Van Der Kaap presents a video work titled Shanghai, 7 a.m.. The presentation will be on view next week during regular opening hours.Furthermore, on Thursday evening, the artist will be present from 18.00 until 20.00.
In 2013, I came across this scene in Shanghai when I was looking for a coffee at seven in the morning. It was in December on a small square at the beginning of Nanjing Lu, the busy tourist shopping street, just before the shops opened. Someone put down a CD player with an amplifier and the group started dancing. in 2017 I added different music to the video, by Âme, who also made the soundtrack for my film ‘Beyond Index’. This scene did not end up in the film. When Michiel asked me if I wanted to show a video in his gallery, I almost immediately thought of this one. Especially now.
Gerald Van Der Kaap is an Amsterdam-based artist, who participated in some of the key moments of media art, without ever fully pausing for very long in any one of them. Since the early 80s he uses photography to access the entire field of media in the era of its digital reproducibility: (digital) photography, video, trash tv, a dadaïst CD-Rom, books, clubnights, electronic music, internet, mobile phones, and an experimental feature film made in China: Beyond Index.
Kaap’s photographic and video works have been the subject of numerous exhibitions including two solo shows at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam; Museum Folkwang, Essen; Canon’s Artlab 2, Tokyo; Kunsthaus Graz; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam; Palau de la Virreina, Barcelona; Art Institute of Chicago; Museum Ludwig, Cologne; Guangdong Museum of Art.
