Dead Seconds, with Willem Oorebeek

SHANAYNAY Paris, France

One thing is to be a fan. Another is to convince someone to take a day off from his or her winter sleep to talk about what you believe is a shared field of interests. Eventually still being a fan but becoming a friend.

Exhibition text by Amalie Eibye Brandt

In 2015 I asked Willem Oorebeek if we could make an exhibition together in the project space SHANAYNAY in Paris, France. After seeing his work on several occasions I became convinced that, although we are from different generations, we have a common approach in developing work that interrupts the flow of visual information. We both use materials and adapt techniques, that are related to printing, to explore the limits of readability. The exhibition Dead Seconds was made to pair these mutual interests.

Personal annotation

Seconde Morte. 2016
Burned silkscreen prints. Dimensions changed over time
Pressing Issues. 2016
Burned silkscreen prints. Dimensions changed over time.
Seconde morte, detail
Pressing Issues, detail

The language that is used in watch making is not only highly technical, it is also psychological. When you are concerned with the mechanical side of visualizing time, thoughts about mortality, temporality and memory seem to seep in automatically. The works in the exhibition Dead Seconds are appropriated texts and imagery found in watchmaking journals. They emphasize moments when the use of language is mechanical, personal and poetic in the same time.

The title of the exhibition is Dead Seconds, which is the little sliver of silence that is artificially produced to make the distinction between one second and the next. Other articles, that have titles such as Split Personalities or Pressing Issues, have been silk screened, burnt to the brink of disintegration and scattered over the floor of the exhibition space.

Personal annotation

Mechanismus [Constant Force], detail
Untitled.
Burned silkscreen prints. Dimensions changed over time
Mechanismus [Constant Force]
Sunlight through and C-print on transparent foil. 220 x 210 cm
Willem Oorebeek. Les Secrets de la Mémoire #3. 2005
Lithographic ink on magazine page on dibond. 42 x 42 cm
Installation view Dead Seconds
Untitled
Burned silkscreen print. Dimensions changed over time

This condition of instability often occurs in Lahuis’ practice, when it deals with the subject of text and its reproduction. The relation between a complex technique that often demands a lot of preparation and the way to perceive these texts, often based on a ‘fragility’ of the gaze, are symptomatic of a special balance ... between the production of the work and its consumption, between the medium and the message, between being and meaning. Lennart Lahuis’ works form a subtle critique on easy consumption and build awareness that fragility is the lifeline connecting artwork and viewer.

Lorenzo Benedetti An attempt to measure the fragility of time.


Installation view
Mechanismus I [Constant Force]. 2016.
Sunlight through and C-print on transparent foil.
Approximately 430 x 220 cm.
Untitled. 2016.
Pulped laserprints on wall. Approximately 200 x 150 cm
Installation view
Untitled, detail. 2016
Pulped laserprints on wall. Approximately 200 x 150 cm

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