NO SHOW MUSEUM

Show V, Immaterial Sculpture. 1965

1st | B

Felt pen, 32 x 22 cm. Collection Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam. Lower right: Air Door.

"In this show, various air doors are placed where people can walk through them. People here have the sensory experience of warmth, air and cold. See technique of air doors at department stores. " (Marinus Boezem, 1965)

Three invisible air doors, which arise as currents of cold and warm air blown into a room, are indicated in the space via bundles of arrows and lines. The articulation of the space that arises is the result of invisible processes that influence the conduct of people in that space, and who are included in the system as co-performers. In contrast to the related Show XI, Rising Air, 1966, the apparatus that creates the differences in air temperature is not shown in the drawing. Handwritten English instructions were later introduced into several stencils. The show was realized in 1999 in Kröller-Müller Museum.

Windtable. 1968

1st | B

Nylon, chrome, wood, fan, 120 x 50 x 50 cm. Collections: Textielmuseum; Tilburg; Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam; Musée St. Pierre Art Contemporain, Lyon; U. Beimling-Binder, Villingen; Collection of the artist. 

A round tabletop was mounted on a fragile music stand. A thin white tablecloth was then laid over the tabletop, with it nearly reaching nearly the floor; it was set in motion by an oscillating fan. In its ceaseless flowing movement, the eddying transparent cloth assumed an ever-changing spatial form. The soft humming of the fan and the nearly noiseless fluttering of the nylon cloth added a poetic, auditory dimension to the wind sculpture. Space was not primarily presented as an object with fixed boundaries, but as content: the air. The tablecloths were the medium through which the immaterial air could manifest itself as a variable aspect of space. The air allowed for a spatial happening in which a certain timelessness was expressed, because the image was always changing, without ever repeating its forms. The Windtables were shown individually, or in combination, depending on the space and the context. A cinematographic aspect of the Windtables can be identified in its ever-changing image and its continual, progressive movement.

Signing the Sky Above the Port of Amsterdam with an Aeroplane. 1969

1st | B

Photographs, wood, aluminium. 3 panels, each 122 x 250 x 2 cm. Collection Musée d'Art at Archéologie, Toulon. 

A Skywriting airplane wrote the word ''Boezem'' with condensation trails in the cloudy sky above Amsterdam's harbor. After some time, the word began to blur, and ultimately disappeared behind a cloud bank. The happening can be conceived of as signing the cosmos, but because the signature was sure to disappear, it appears the artist was distancing himself from this pretentious act. Boezem did not presume to do that, and did not confer the aura of a work of art upon the firmament; he was only confirming his 1963 discovery of air, weather, and wind as visual material. An action is more important than the result. A signature in the heavens was a sign of the expansion of the context of art and a commentary on the rather limited space that was traditionally assigned to art. In the three panoramic photographs, the passage of time between the appearance and the disappearance of the signature remains as a visible souvenir of this air show. The photographic record, which was created through a process in which time is an important factor, is an essential part of the artwork. The work also referenced Yves Klein's first work of art: 

"In 1946, while still an adolescent, I was to sign my name on the other side of the sky during a fantastic "realistico-imaginary" journey. That day, as I lay stretched upon the beach of Nice, I began to feel hatred for birds which flew back and forth across my blue sky, cloudless sky, because they tried to bore holes in my greatest and most beautiful work." (Yves Klein, The Chelsea Hotel Manifesto, New York, 1961)

The Absence of the Artist. 1970-1995. 

Wood, cotton, embroidery silk, a pair of black and white shoes. 80 x 120 x 80 cm. Collection of the artist.

An embroidery hoop is attached to the back of a wooden chair. A sheet, which is draped like a tent over the chair, is clamped into the frame. In the round frame, the letters 'Boez' are embroidered in cursive script. The "z" is incomplete, with the embroidery trailing off; the needle and thread lay idle below the letters. A pair of flashy dance shoes has been placed in front of the chair in such a way so as to give the appearance that the artist is still sitting in the chair. The motif of a pair of shoes as a token of the presence of the artist is a recurrent theme in Boezem's oeuvre.

For reasons that are not clear, the artist has broken off his action. With this particular sculpture, built from fragments, Boezem offers a commentary on the principle of the unity of the act, time, and place in classic sculpture, and he also draws a bead on the code of signing. The theatrical gesture of Signing the Sky with an Aeroplane, 1969, in which the artist's name appears and disappears against the background of clouds in a Dutch sky, seems to be brought down to the proportions of a hobbyist's incomplete project. Boezem experienced embroidery, the sticking in and drawing out of a needle and thread, as a sculptural act.

Links

Marinusboezem.nl | More Works of Boezem | Upstream Gallery | Galerie Müller-Roth | Further informations

Credits

All reproductions are courtesy of the artist and Upstream Gallery © Marinus Boezem; The Absence of the Artist, Photo: Gert Jan van Rooij