MARIJKE VAN WARMERDAM

MARIJKE VAN WARMERDAM
Promise

14th May - 28th June 2003

Lisson Gallery is pleased to present its second solo exhibition of work by Marijke van Warmerdam, opening on 14th May.

The works in Promise relate to van Warmerdam’s continued interest in the passing of time and the recurring states and actions that exist within it. In the film, photography and sculpture presented in this new body of work van Warmerdam employs repetition and the film loop to superimpose the present with an anticipated future and an imagined past.

The films Weather forecast and Green deal metaphorically with the issue of time passing. In the panoramic film loop Weather forecast, a bathtub acts as a gauge for constantly changing weather conditions. As a red room clears of fog rain begins to fall, made visible by the impact it makes on the surface of the water in the tub. The rainfall turns into a downpour and dances frenetically upon the surface as the tub overflows before being dramatically emptied by a large chunk of ice crashing down from the top of the frame. The rain stops and the ice melts and as the water in the tub begins to overflow, the room fills with fog…

In Green we are presented with a cropped playground scene of children making and destroying sand cakes in real time. Meanwhile, a single leaf in the foreground performs it’s own cycle of the seasons, turning from yellow to green and back again to yellow. These actions take place in a sequence of hours, days, months or years where van Warmerdam juxtaposes cyclical time in the natural world against a child’s notion of time passing.

In Now, Soon, and Coming up soon van Warmerdam has photographed the various stages of bud, full bloom and fallen blossom against the backdrop of a sheet of white card. Once again, through use of an artificial framework to isolate parts, van Warmerdam sharpens our perception, challenging us to actively examine what we see, reconsider it, and notice qualities that are not immediately apparent, discovering that which is interesting, strange, beautiful and unique.

Marijke van Warmerdam lives and works in Amsterdam, Holland. She was the representative for Holland in the Dutch Pavilion at the 1995 Venice Biennale. This year her work is included in the opening exhibition of the new Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven. She has had solo exhibitions at The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, U.S.A.; Malmö Konsthall, Sweden; Kunsthalle Nürnberg, Nürnberg, Germany; Castello di Rivolli, Turino, Italy; Henry Moore Institute, Leeds, UK; and PS1 New York, NY. Group exhibitions include the Kwangju Biennial, South Korea; Documenta X, Kassel, and the 1998 Sydney Biennial, Australia.

The work Weather forecast has been produced by the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead.

For further information contact Jill Silverman on 020 7535 0811. For press and media queries contact Lynne Gentle. Tel: 020 7724 2739 Fax: 020 7724 7124