Urgent Conversations: Athens – Antwerp

    ENELNL

    The exhibitions Urgent Conversations: Athens–Antwerp and Urgent Conversations: Antwerp – Athens are a collaboration between EMST and M HKA, a theoretical and visual dialogue, based on works from the collections of both museums, which includes more than 70 works structured in 22 topics.   

    28.04.2017 - 07.01.2018        

    M HKA, Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst Antwerpen - Leuvenstraat 32, 2000 Antwerpen

    EMST, National Museum of Contemporary Art - Kallirrois Avenue & Amvr. Frantzi Str., Athens 11743

    Jimmie Durham

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    image: (c) Blaise Mann
    Rocks Encouraged, 2010
    Jimmie Durham
    Installation , variable dimensions
    petrified wood, text

    The installation Rocks Encouraged consists of big pieces of petrified wood enclosed in a sound-proof space where one spectator at a time can enter. Jimmie Durham explains: “I knew that one could do something highly concentrated. I bought the beautiful strange stones in Berlin, because I could not resist them …Then I had to think what to do with them that would not seem a desecration or either too simplistic, so I thought that making people experience them without jabber, without comparisons, without distractions … One person at a time; no matter how theatrical or impractical that might turn out… I wanted the most thoughtful, meditative piece”

    [For the full text read the press text of the exhibition Rocks Encouraged in Portikus, Frankfurt, where this work was first exhibited]

    The poem hanging on the wall inside the installation is called Middle and was first published in the book Columbus Day in 1983. Its two last verses read: “Trees gave seeds. And rocks encouraged”. [To read the full poem click on the assets bellow]

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