God Among the Dutch
Museum Catharijneconvent Utrecht, 18 June - 1 October 2006
According to the Musem Catharijneconvent, God Among the Dutch offers an experience of Christian faith in all of its aspects. That is why they invited prominent Dutch photographers to deal with the theme. Here we stumble at the problem of artists mediating a certain belief and a certain part of our culture that probably also influences on the way we drink coffee. A few artists cannot tell everything there is about religion. But the experiment itself is rewarding enough because it gives the viewer some heavy thinking to chew on.
Maurice Scheltens, Halo (2006)
The story about religion starts with Maurice Scheltens with his Christian Symbols and Attributes. Here the viewer is confronted by carefully arranged artefacts. Somtimes the link to faith is not so obvious. A pair of washed jeans in Lashing that is shaped into a cross and finely pinned on a neutral white background and D.I.Y. kit of wooden planks, cardboard boxes and barbed wire should better be described as a ready-made that makes use of ordinary objects to tell a wholly personal story, rather than something that serves as a testament of Dutch faith. The motifs are selected and arranged in a way that the connection with the symbols of Christian faith happens in a snap, no heavy thinking necessary. Observed alone and without the arrangement most of these object would not stand a chance serving as Christian symbols. Scheltens thus brings out and overturns an iconographical system that was being sustained and renewed by art through the past centuries.
Anuschka Blommers & Niels Schumm, Major Bosshardt (2005)
In the series of portraits of Church Leaders by Anuschka Blommers and Niels Schumm we can see the people in charge of the machinery of different Christian churches in Holland. Almost all the portraits are nearing the limits of how photos can be as neutral and revealing as possible. The cold approach of Blommers and Schumm is not favourable towards their sitters. The light reflecting from their faces, the clean background, the ultra digital sharpness and their positioning in an empty space make them feel awkward and useless in their surroundings. Some of them can fill this nothingness with their charisma, others look onto us nervously, are insecure or not totally in ease with the outside world. The distance between us and these people is certainly not in lines with how these people should function in Dutch society. Here they are unapproachable to the people they are working for, no matter their denomination.
Gertjan Kocken, Uiterwaardenstraat Amsterdam (2004)
Gertjan Kocken's story about The Places of Worship starts with a 15th century Utrecht relief that was destroyed in the inconoclastic rage of protestants. The photo is about a historical turnover in Dutch culture when Christians stopped using rich imagery to improve their faith. A window in Amsterdam where Virgin Mary was appearing to the woman living there projects another form of worship. With the photos next to each other one would connect the lack of holy images from iconoclasm on with apparitions of these images in order to fill in the gap. The rest of the series gives us a good comparison how the differences between the interiors of protestant and roman catholic churches have vanished in the sweep of modern architecture. Kocken's story is about the lack of imagery and its replacement through visions. Worshipping a window overlooking a park becomes one with worshiping God in a nearly empty modern church. It is about worshipping an abstract idea. There is no more bearded old guy creating the world in these churches.
Ari Versluis & Ellie Uyttenbroek, Emos-Rotterdam (2006)
Communities of Worship by Ari Versluis and Ellie Uyttenbroek is a religious extension of their Exactitudes series. It is a pop art-like gathering of a number of specimens of the same species. Although an interesting concept which is not too difficult to understand, the works cannot be treated as serious documents of how certain people look like. It would be interesting to find out how the artists create their work. Do they appropriate the outfits of their sitters as much as they appropriate their posture so that the portraits appear unified? Do they gather different specimens that still look similar to each other? Is the idea about unified groups of people stronger than reality?
The more realistic part of the project is in fact a series of reports published by the newspaper Trouw. These deal directly with the godly matters and ways of religious people in the Netherlands, a project much more important for the social history of faith than the artistic part of the exhibition. The actual exhibition is more important for recognising the effects of religion on contemporary art.
The label God Among the Dutch is not in synch with the exhibition itself because it presents highly personal photographic stories on religion. There are, of course, explorations about the religious principles that are intertwined with our way of thinking and acting (Scheltens, Kocken) and there are documents of people and places (Scheltens, Versluis & Uyttenbroek, Blommers & Schumm).