Trip to Amsterdam with studio visit - Sarah van Sonsbeeck

07:00

Departure at S.M.A.K.

Pick up at hotel Plaza, Antwerp

10:30 – 12:00

Free brunch in TEN café Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam

12:00 – 13:30

Guided tour in Stedelijk Museum

• Yto Barrada | BAD COLOR COMBOS

Bad Color Combos surveys the recent work of artist Yto Barrada (France, 1971), including film, textiles, photography and sculpture. This solo exhibition brings together Barrada's work from the last five years and specially newly developed work. This is her first solo exhibition in the Netherlands with previously unexhibited, multidisciplinary work.

In Bad Color Combos, Yto Barrada examines cultural phenomena, personal histories and natural processes. From a feminist and ecological perspective, Barrada brings forward various themes such as the acceleration and deceleration of time, motherhood, play, the craft of dyeing with natural dyes and colour as a material; traditions of modernism and our futile attempts to control nature.

14:00 – 16:00

Visit to city galeries, Tegenboschvanvreden, Annet Gelink, ...

16:00 – 17:00

Studio visit:

• Sarah van Sonsbeeck (°1976, Utrecht) studied architecture at TUDelft (MA) and art at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy (BA). In 2008 - 2009, she was a resident at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam. Fundamental to Sarah van Sonsbeeck's artistic exploration is the investigation of the formal and conceptual qualities of gold. She uses gold as a medium for minimalist works that dialogue with both their surroundings and current issues. By taking the standard gold bar as a standard, the artist repeatedly shapes different states of the material in her works. Thus, Van Sonsbeeck allows this contextually elusive, controversial and (for art) unconventional material to take many forms: from a puddle on the floor to a finely woven carpet. With her oeuvre, Van Sonsbeeck thus builds a critical and poetic artistic transformation of the historical foundation of our current financial value system. Gold has been associated with wealth, power and purity for centuries. Using gold as an artistic medium, she questions not only the value and worth of this material, but also of art itself. Although initially trained as an architect, Van Sonsbeeck's artworks never seem to retain their shape. Her art focuses on the thin permeable line between interior and exterior - without paying much attention to the façade. This leads her to explore the more intangible side of architecture, scrutinising the often peripheral elements that determine how we live in our homes - the things that architects cannot control (such as neighbourhood noise). She reinforces these elements and devises shields against them, but also welcomes the unpredictable and reveals the minute but intimate relationships between people who do not necessarily know each other. Sarah van Sonsbeeck, it seems, still practices architecture, but of the immaterial - but no less fundamental - kind. She has had solo and group exhibitions at Kunsthalle Emden (2022), Annet Gelink Gallery, Amsterdam (2020, 2017, 2014), Oude Kerk, Amsterdam (2020, 2017), MAK Museum, Vienna (2019), Manifesta 12, Palermo (2018.) ), De Nederlandsche Bank, Amsterdam (2013, 2015), Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven (2012), Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam (2013), Stedelijk Museum, Schiedam (2012) Museum De Paviljoens, Almere (2009), Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach (2011) & Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2009).

Antwerp members get off bus, hotel Crown Plaza

20:30

Back at S.M.A.K.