Club Solo in Breda

S.M.A.K. is a partner museum of the Breda-based artists’ initiative ‘Club Solo’, together with Muhka (Antwerp), the Van Abbemuseum (Eindhoven) and GEM (The Hague). Four times a year, ‘Club Solo’ organises a solo exhibition by a Belgian or Dutch artist. The project organisers simultaneously invite one of the partner museums to formulate an ‘artistic response’ to the work of the artist in question, using one (or more) works from their own collection. The Dutch artist Marjolijn Dijkman (b. 1978, Groningen, the Netherlands) is the central figure in this new edition. Dijkman makes video installations, photographs and site-specific objects. Her work focuses on the question of how we, as a human species, relate to the world and the universe around us. Within her practice, Dijkman explores scientific research and analyses cultural norms, the mainstream dissemination of images and the exploitation of natural life sources.

S.M.A.K. has selected two works from its collection as a ‘response’. The first is Johan De Wilde’s (b. 1964, Zele, Belgium) ever-expanding series of drawings entitled ‘Pi’ (2007-...), which he has been working on for thirteen years, and is comprised of endless iterations of the number ‘pi’. This value connects to the ‘scientific’ aspect of Dijkman’s oeuvre and functions as a metaphor for the almost magical, mathematical and indispensable link in the description of the universe. The second work, the sculpture ‘Perpetuum Mobile (25 kg)’ by Nina Canell (b. 1979, Växjö, Sweden), relates to the energetic and immaterial in Dijkman’s work. Canell uses the natural, elusive phenomenon of condensation to harden a bag of cement powder into an abstract sculpture. These works from the S.M.A.K. collection, each in their own unique way, forge connections with two important pillars of Marjolijn Dijkman’s oeuvre.
More info via www.clubsolo.nl