Tag: The Balcony

Art in corona times 26. Wouter van der Giessen, Kraam (Market Stall); The Balcony, The Hague

Wouter van der Giessen, who has just graduated from the art academy in Breda, is fascinated by colourful plastic furniture and their sculptural qualities.

Presently, at shop window gallery The Balcony, he has installed seven uniform objects.

They look like children’s seats or plastic seats from a swing or another playing object.

The title may suggest a colourful string of flags marking a market stall.

However, they might as well suggest nothing in particular, except for a row of identical objects in four different cheerful colours in a shop window.

Which, in itself, is enough to bring a striking surprise in between the different shop windows in this particular street.

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© Villa Next Door 2020

Contents of all photographs courtesy to Wouter van der Giessen and The Balcony, Den Haag.

Bertus Pieters

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Anita Mikas & Markus Liehr, Express Delivery Syndrome; The Balcony, The Hague

In The Balcony’s shop window Anita Mikas and Markus Liehr show Express Delivery Syndrome.

Mikas’ and Liehr’s works show the estrangement Far Eastern mass production brings to us Westerners.

Of course exotic mass production has been a fascination with Westerners ever since the first big international  trade fairs in the 19th century, but Mikas and Liehr add new refinement to it, making it more attractive than it could ever have been in real.

These 19th century trade fairs in mind, one could even think of the end of an era, with air traffic having come to a virtual standstill these days.

© Villa Next Door 2020

Contents of all photographs courtesy to the artists and The Balcony, Den Haag.

Bertus Pieters

VILLA NEXT DOOR IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY ADVERTISING ON THIS PAGE!!

Niels Post, On Spam, Comment Spam #67; The Balcony, The Hague

Spam are the purulent pimples of the advertising disease we are all suffering from. Niels Post (1972) makes it a feast of superfluity.

What irritates you in your email box or in the internet as spam, becomes something strange and unintelligible when posted in a more monumental way in a space where nothing seems to be for sale.

In spite of the superfluity of spam Post works with great dedication on the clarity of his works. Post makes a subversion of a subversion.

At the moment The Balcony shows a spam work by Post on its shop window in Herenstraat, one of those wonderful small initiatives in The Hague.

Herenstraat is used by many people as a passage way between their work and the railway station.

Do they notice? And what do they notice?

© Villa Next Door 2019

Contents of all photographs courtesy to Niels Post and The Balcony, Den Haag

Bertus Pieters

VILLA NEXT DOOR IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY ADVERTISING ON THIS PAGE!!