Are our desires fluid?
Or are our ideas in general fluid?
Or is the character of the world more fluid than we would like or than we were once used to?
The exhibition Fluid Desires at Nest has been closed down early because of the Corona virus Covid-19.
When i visited the gallery last week the government was just giving a press conference about new measures and recommendations to contain the spread of the virus.
The next day Nest, the museums and many other exhibition platforms closed their doors.
In a way there is a link between the spread of the virus and its consequences, and the works shown in Fluid Desires.
As Nest says on its website: “…concepts that had been carved in stone for decades, have now started to flow. Notions like time, space, reality, nature, the object, human and the object-man relation.”
That quotation seems to suit the present more than ever.
Nest is always trying to give reflections on the present in its shows, but it couldn’t have imagined when planning this particular exhibition – and neither could curator Nanda Janssen – that the present would be as fluid as it is now at this very moment.
There is nothing predictive in the show – artists can’t predict the future any better than you or me – , it is just that the world itself has taken these works into the very fluid present and has given them a new value.
On one hand it is regrettable that the show was closed down early, but on the other hand that seems to have become an action that is part of the show.
In the mean time the show is very interesting and it is staged aesthetically as usual.
That “as usual” has however been taken over by a radical and extremely fluid move of nature itself.
The aesthetics of beauty is no match for the radical aesthetics of life and death.
In the mean time some pictures of the show may give you some reason for reflection.
Reflection is our best tool for the present and for the future, especially during this kind of imposed Ramadan period.
So i decided to present some extra pictures of this, by now, invisible show.
If you are puzzled about the pictures i refer you to Nest’s website which gives you some extra information about the different artists.
© Villa Next Door 2020
Contents of all photographs courtesy to all artists and Nest, Den Haag.
Bertus Pieters
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