Riet Wijnen Sculpture Sixteen Conversations on Abstraction 2016 Photo Gert Jan van Rooij

Riet Wijnen Diagram Sixteen Conversations on Abstraction 2018.

2019

Riet Wijnen – Sixteen Conversations on Abstraction

Riet Wijnen (*1988 in Venray, NL) is intensively concerned with the history and forms of abstraction, both as an artistic principle and in various other fields, such as science, philosophy and activism. Her artistic works cover a wide spectrum from sculpture to graphics to texts. In this superimposition of the forms of images, research and dialogue, thought experiments emerge with which historical and socio-political constructions are opened up and critically questioned.

Wijnen’s series of works “Sixteen Conversations on Abstraction” started in 2015. The central structure of the project is a series of fictitional conversations between people who existed but never met, such as academic, professor, and activist Silvia Federici (1924), philosopher Thomas Metzinger (1958), the association Création (1932-1936), and modernist artist Marlow Moss (1889–1958) and Grace Crowley (1890 –1979). Besides those fictional conversations the main organizing principle of the cycle Sixteen Conversations on Abstraction consists of sixteen subsequent works, and one sculpture, which functions as a diagram or score, mapping the connections amongst the different conversations. Those three principle elements form together an abstract space for, among other things, characters, places, and topics in which the term abstraction is examined, formulated, and constructed and deconstructed from different perspectives; information in one work influences the content and form of another work, several works in the cycle Sixteen Conversations on Abstraction are in a constant state of change.

Exhibition opening: Saturday 26 Oktober 2019, 15 pm
Exhibition: 27 October 2019 to 19 January 2020

Exhibition view Bentheim Castle 2019, Photo: Gert Jan van Rooij

Exhibition view Bentheim Castle 2019, Photo: Gert Jan van Rooij

Exhibition view Bentheim Castle 2019, Photo: Gert Jan van Rooij

Exhibition view Bentheim Castle 2019, Photo: Gert Jan van Rooij

Exhibition view Bentheim Castle 2019, Photo: Gert Jan van Rooij

Exhibition view Bentheim Castle 2019, Photo: Gert Jan van Rooij

Exhibition view Bentheim Castle 2019, Photo: Gert Jan van Rooij

Exhibition view Bentheim Castle 2019, Photo: Gert Jan van Rooij

Exhibition view Bentheim Castle 2019, Photo: Gert Jan van Rooij

Exhibition view Bentheim Castle 2019, Photo: Gert Jan van Rooij

Exhibition view Bentheim Castle 2019, Photo: Gert Jan van Rooij

Exhibition view Bentheim Castle 2019, Photo: Gert Jan van Rooij

Exhibition view Bentheim Castle 2019, Photo: Gert Jan van Rooij

Exhibition view Bentheim Castle 2019, Photo: Gert Jan van Rooij