C-MAX

On behalf of Michiel Simons I kindly invite you to the opening of the exhibition C-max featuring works by Sonja Oudendijk, Gerald van der Kaap, and Pieter Bijwaard.

Pharmacokinetics deals with the route of a drug through the body.
C-max is the highest concentration reached.
T-max is the time at which it is reached.

Can art exist without concentration?
Is time a factor?
Are we living in times when it is becoming harder to concentrate?
Is art healing?

These three artists make us think about these questions.

Void is the title of the sculptures shown by Sonja Oudendijk (1958). And that is exactly what they are, empty. That is to say, they are empty inside but the glass skin is full of color, reflection, and transparency. The top is open, like a vase.
Through her focus and concentration while creating these sculptures, Sonja Oudendijk strives to infuse the emptiness or space with her inner self.
And then she asks the viewer to do the same when looking at them.

In 2002, Gerald van der Kaap (1959) lived for several months as an artist-in-residence on the campus of the University of Xiamen in China. With the work he produced, he created the exhibition Passing the Information. It felt, according to Gerald van der Kaap, like a secret transaction: an exchange of information between a Western artist and Chinese students.
Furthermore, the staged photo Passing the Information also shows a role reversal between student and teacher. And thus, the classical hierarchy is temporarily disrupted.
The slouching students seem to show little interest in the video Passing the Information, partly made by themselves under the direction of Gerald van der Kaap. It shows documentary, even forbidden images, sometimes seen for the first time in China. These are interspersed with scenes from their own lives. Are they complicit? Are we looking at a conceptual Droste effect? And more importantly, is this staged photo actually a documentary one?
Xiada (Girls' Dorm), (collection of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam) shows the small figure of a student sitting on a balcony in the top left corner. She is bent over a book. The other balconies seem to serve as huge open-air closets. Amidst this visual abundance, her concentration is moving.]

"A rational person would not know what to do if he saw me at work."
A quote from the recent publication U-intarsia by Pieter Bijwaard (1955).
The precision and concentration he exercises, and his patience, border on the unbelievable. After a visit to a Zen monastery in the north of Groningen, his work gradually changes.
In the early hours in the meditation hall, he sits with the monks facing the wall. In the center of that space, a single candle burns.
This arrangement gradually makes its appearance in subsequent work. Geometric compositions are arranged along the edges of the paper.
Pieter Bijwaard leaves the top open. The U-shape that is thus formed appeared to be very powerful in its simplicity.

Ido Vunderink

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