TITLE: Hover Hover
ARTIST: Gerald van der Kaap
WORK DATE: 1991
CATEGORY: Photographs
MATERIALS: Cibachrome, dibond, wood
EDITION/SET OF: 3/4
SIZE: h: 49.2 x w: 54.7 in / h: 125 x w: 138.9 cm
Gerald Van Der Kaap
Opleiding
Academie voor Beeldende Kunsten St. Joost, Breda (1978-1980)
Prijzen
Singerprijs 2007
Gerald Van Der Kaap is een van de belangrijkste Nederlandse kunstenaars, en een grondlegger van het gebruik van nieuwe media in de beeldende kunsten. Hij is sinds 1993 veelgevraagd vj in vele binnen- en buitenlandse clubs. Van Der Kaap begon zijn loopbaan als fotograaf en uitgever van het tijdschrift Zien (1980-1986). Hij kreeg in 1991 een eerste solo-tentoonstelling in het Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (Hover Hover), waarna vele tentoonstellingen volgden in binnen- en buitenlandse galeries en musea.
Zijn werk is vaak gepresenteerd tijdens evenementen zoals Heineken Night Live in AHOY Rotterdam met een symfonieorkest van 80 man (1999), en in bekende Amsterdamse gelegenheden, zoals Club RoXY en Chemistry. Vanaf 2000 organiseert hij maandelijks State of Bliss, een experimentele clubavond in samenwerking met DJ´s Dimitri en 100% Isis.
In 1996 kreeg Gerald Van Der Kaap de Capilux Alblas Prijs voor zijn hele oeuvre. Naar aanleiding hiervan verscheen de monografie Wherever you are on this planet, met een overzicht van zijn werk tot dan toe (Uitgeverij 1001). Het werk van Van Der Kaap is vastgelegd op tape, dvd en cd-rom, en is ook terug te vinden op zijn website www.geraldvanderkaap.com.
-Pauline Terreehorst, 2001
Gerald Van Der Kaap
Gerald Van Der Kaap was born in Enschede, the Netherlands, in 1959.
He studied at Academie voor beeldende Kunsten St. Joost, Breda.
From 1980 until 1989 he worked as an editor and publisher for different magazines.
He has carried out several commissioned art projects. He also works as VJ and is the creator of an “automatic veejay machine” at club 013 in the South of Holland.
He has also worked as a producer of art visual magazines such as Zien (1980-86) and Blind (1989).
He currently works on a number of assignments and projects which have/will become public shows in the Netherlands.
He’s been awarded Capi-Lux Alblas prize in 1996.
Gerald Van Der Kaap is one of the world’s leading media artists whose work has caused considerable controversy.
Passing the Information (II) is the sequel to a project of the same name, which Van Der Kaap presented in 2002 in Xiamen, China. Van Der Kaap spent three months as artist in residence at the University of Xiamen, a fast growing city on the South China Coast. According to officials, Xiamen is not only the most beautiful but also the cleanest city in China. For his exhibition in Xiamen, Van Der Kaap rebuilt a classroom with traditional Chinese school desks. A white surface was installed as a type of blackboard on which the artist projected video portraits of students he made acquaintance with. Passing the Information does not present teachers in front of the classroom, but students watching students telling jokes or students looking into the camera with a penetrating gaze. In this setting, the entirety of Chinese hierarchy and authority is temporarily neutralized, if not nullified. Without solicitation, Van Der Kaap also organized an outdoor party where he was both VJ and DJ. More than 1000 young people attended the party, which was the first of its kind in China.
Part Two consists of a series of works that result from a rigid, almost formal direction. The works explore situations in and around the campus and demonstrate an outstanding quality. They reside in a liminal zone between reality and fiction. The works are neither wholly documentary in nature nor illusions of narcissistic dreams. They are more a reflection of an engaged approach in which people are not models or actors, but participants. No commitment is implied, but Van Der Kaap aims to stimulate, or as he describes it, “pass on information.”
If Part One can be qualified as a “Manifestation,” Part Two is certainly a “Manifesto.” According to Van Der Kaap, “these are temporary and autonomous actions. Yet in one way or another they seem to bear consequence in the spheres outside photography. In China at least, they seem to interfere in their reality. Why specifically there? Maybe because such turbulent changes are taking place in China at this time. This work requires a totally new culture…"
The leading roles in Passing the Information are interpreted by three Chinese girls: Fang, Limei and Weiwei. Any real-life resemblances is merely coincidental. They play themselves, other people, and their own dreams. Van der Kaap has kept the hundreds of sms-messages and diary notes that he received from China via e-mail for a future publication or film. He may use this material when he returns to Shanghai to make a short film. As the artist said himself, "This is a work-in-progress. The making of as well as the meaning of the work change in time and through passing …let’s make it easy… the information."
Bart Vanderbeken
www.geraldvanderkaap.com
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