At: Concrete Store
Date: 6 June – 23 July
Location: Spuistraat 250 Amsterdam

In 2008 Gallery Le Petit Port in Leiden first presented a new form of international group show. ‘Assemblage no.1’ was at first designed to be an ongong project by guest curator/artist Billy Gruner (AUS). This featured an international coterie of friends invited to place a key studio piece within a group installation.

Described by the curator as “social assemblage”, mostly small works characteristic of an individual artists style were situated into a surrounding design” - as seen above, w/w by Daniel Gottin (CH). The curator then noted, “importantly most reductive wall works are spatial interventions, created for public view, and this intervention driving the projects simply contributes to a moderness or, alternative post 20thc type of non-objective art”.

The curator currently notes, ”The latest assemblage continues to stake out an ideal, to present an aesthetic response that admires while critiquing decorative quotation or, the stylistic appropriation of former visual appearances recurrent in contemporary art - in particular here the influences of Theo Van Doesburg and DeStijl. Since 2008 the assemblage projects have continued to pay homage with due respect in that same way. It matters that the inspiring origins, informing ideological and social concepts, and current stylistic delinations remain uncompromised even when interpreted or advanced within a refreshing of known discourse. In this sense the use of homage appears upfront and presents as a key element to understanding the idea of the ‘fanclub’ presentation”. And, “….as can be seen in the first Leiden assemblage itself now being revisited, some of the 20thc’s best known ideologies are not revived but transformed by the artists own practices within their new language forms. Most importantly, this specialised group concept drives the artists towards, Gesamtkunstwerk”.

The 2nd Assemblage produced at SNO in Sydney in 2010 was done only in b/w. The 3rd followed in Toowoomba Queensland. That Assemblage was commissioned as part of an broader exchange between WEST Projects in Sydney and Raygun in Toowoomba Queensland and happened in december 2014.Typically in the later assemblage projects various artists came from the Blue Mountains generally and others out the MAP and Raygun networks. A national and international reductive art corterie now re presented in another lineup in Amsterdam.

The Concrete Amsterdam Assemblage is based on the same model as earlier assemblages, this is because featured is a group of contemporary artists who continue work together, globally. This adaptive coterie or grouping is nonetheless representative of a type that have been significantly engaging what Gruner describes elsewhere as a “new wave arrival” or, “world wide ‘post-formalist aesthetic response’ to late 20thc art,… whose individual practices seemlessly work with each other despite many differences of intent, stylistic delivery, or individual making processes”.

The 4th assemblage project likewise aims to produce a simple cross planar effect, again Daniel Gottin was invited to design the ‘frame-like’ wall work design without knowing how it will work in with the other artists, their bespoke stylres and critical concerns. All of whom later selectively place their work into the growing architectural formation. Importantly for the vitality of the project no one involved knows what others are doing unil the day of a hang. This closed circuit allows randomness and unforseen differences to produce unexpected results. The reason is to open an experimentaion of what design implies in contemporary art. It shows how identity may flux in a system that seeks an overall position or net result, regardless of intent.

The individual works by Daniel Gottin, Richard Van der Aa, Deb Covell, Guido Winkler, Serhiy Popov, Arjan Janssen, Iemke Van Dijk, Peter Holm, Karin Lind, Jasper van der Graaf, Georgi Dimitrov, Roland Orepuk, Jose Heerkens, Kyle Jenkins, Jan Maarten Voskuil, Tilman, and the Billy Gruners’ own are not there to be seen obliquely within this system, rather as existing in a view point, a multiple perspective, a unique situation. Here the curator claims “…collaborative envision is exemplified within the architecture of social conditions, assemblage”.