‘Untitled’, Misha de Ridder, 2012 – Analogue Barite Print, 28 x 35 cm
Unseen Photo Fair, Amsterdam
Juliette Jongma, Amsterdam | booth 50
19 – 23 September 2012
Solo presentation Misha de Ridder
http://www.unseenamsterdam.com/juliette-jongma-nl
http://www.unseenamsterdam.com/photographers/87
http://www.unseenamsterdam.com/unseen-interviews-misha-de-ridder
Until medio June 2012 the monumental work ‘Riettürli’ (180 x 230 cm) by Misha de Ridder will be exhibited in the unique Brutalist architecture of the Thomaskerk in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
The Thomaskerk by Dutch architect Karel L. Sijmons was finished in 1966 and contains a stained glass window by the Spanish artist Antonio Saura.
‘Riettürli’ can be visited on appointment or every Sunday before and after the service. For an appointment call +31 20 6738171. On March 11th at 3 pm there will be a Q&A and filmscreening with Misha de Ridder.
Thomaskerk
Prinses Irenestraat 36 (near Beethovenstraat and NS station Amsterdam Zuid WTC)
1077 WX Amsterdam
The Netherlands
‘Riettürli’ is published in photo book ‘Abendsonne’ which can be ordered here >
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< Het Parool, August 13, 2011 – ‘Landschap’ by Bob Frommé
http://www.foam.org/foam-amsterdam/coming-up/2011-exhibitions/ridder,-misha-de
http://metropolism.com/reviews/dicht-op-de-huid-van-de-natuur/
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Solstice by Misha de Ridder until August 28, 2011 in Foam photography museum Amsterdam >
Poem by Maria Barnas in the Foam cahier about the exhibition:
WILDERNESS
1
A black physiotherapist in Iceland invited me
for a walk. He looked at my hips
and I saw a future.
He said your posture is wrong.
Shoulders back and chest thrust out
I trudged through the snow pale as my surroundings
and he moved magisterially in the white.
As he pointed out the summit of Vatnajökull
the snow crunched beneath my feet.
The earth’s crust cracked and split
until I stood stretched tall under an ice-cap.
I was just able to see over the ice.
Into the world where the physiotherapist
knelt and reached out his hand to me.
I remained standing. I stood at the centre of the world
at the centre of an astonished universe.
Icy water splashed around my feet
in a crevasse beneath the ice-cap
into which with a single step
I could vanish for all eternity.
I was there. I believe I’ve been to the edge
of the wilderness. But while I stood at that place
it was white inside my head. Empty and cold
and only later did the memory take shape.
Have I really been there? Was that actually me?
There’s little wilderness in my life.
I can pronounce? the word.
It sounds good and unrestrained.
2
Misha has travelled to the last wilderness of Europe
he says kneeling on a carpet of maps
in his studio that depict the frayed edges
of Norway. This is where Hermans walked
he says. We are silent out of what must be reverence.
We look at marks and virtually imperceptible lines.
And here I walked. The landscape is a sculpture I hear.
Every fjord a melted glacier.
Misha describes the fjords as a surface
on which you can work as if on a wall since you’ve lost
the horizon. Nature he says is indifferent.
And what does it mean to be a human being?
I ask him were you ever afraid.
Death is nearby in the wilderness he says.
We stand up from the sketched mountains
and tower above an inner courtyard
where on the roof of a car park
a garden has been laid like a tablecloth.
No one is allowed in. An area of green like a painting
that invites an imaginary walk.
A meandering path and a tree here and there.
On the horizon Rembrandt Breitner and Mondriaan
like rocks in an overgrown landscape of asphalt
and brick. Did the artist do this?
The surroundings are as deceptive as the evidence
of wilderness he brought back to Amsterdam.
I invent landscapes he says.
But we stand in the midst of them.
‘Golden’, Misha de Ridder, 2011 (film still)
Misha de Ridder – Solstice
17 June – 28 August 2011
Misha de Ridder (Alkmaar, 1971) is making photographs and films in the extraordinary light of the subarctic Norwegian north, getting close to the earth’s very heart. At this latitude, only sparse vegetation grows on the dark, craggy mountains. A sojourn in this landscape transforms the earth into a tactile planet: palpable, tangible. De Ridder investigates the expressive qualities of this polar landscape and light, but his work also addresses climatic and ecological extremes. The rugged landscape, the cold and the darkness – or conversely, the lack thereof – leave you dependent on your own resources. De Ridder confronts us with the fragility of human existence in relation to nature.
Short-lived mass media sensations and the economic crisis shrink to insignificance when compared to the forces of nature. In northern Scandinavia the nomadic Sami people have an animistic view of the world: all places and things in nature possess a soul. To show their respect, they move through the wilderness in silence. Nature is our master and death our inescapable ending; recognising this existential vulnerability is a key to better understanding the meaning of our existence.
The backbone of the exhibition is formed by the video works Golden and Asgard: wall-size projections in the semi-darkness. Accompanying the video works are large-format photo prints and a few smaller works. De Ridder’s book Abendsonne is also on display.
Misha de Ridder’s work can be seen as an effort to capture ephemeral phenomena in the natural landscape through photography and video. The experience of place is determined in part by geographical location and physical spatial characteristics. Changing phenomena like the weather, the seasons and the light, as well as the psychological and physical state of the viewer, influence observation. By searching for the absence of human intervention, by waiting for the climax of the temporary and by stretching the technical limits of his camera, De Ridder’s works become both exotic reportages and autonomous artificial worlds.
Misha de Ridder graduated from the Utrecht School of the Arts. Since then his work has been exhibited widely in venues such as the Museum of the City of New York, Photo España in Madrid, Layr Wuestenhagen Contemporary in Vienna, Galerie Juliètte Jongma and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam.
This exhibition has been made possible with support from the Netherlands Foundation for Visual Arts, Design and Architecture [Fonds voor Beeldende Kunsten, Vormgeving en Bouwkunst].
Foam photography museum Amsterdam >
download press release in Dutch >
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“Hij laat je in eerste instantie voelen, deel uitmaken van, en zet je pas later aan tot nadenken.” – Lennard Dost, de Volkskrant, 11 March 2009
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28 February – 11 April 2009
Galerie Juliètte Jongma
Gerard Doustraat 128a
1073VX Amsterdam
The Netherlands
OPENING HOURS
Wednesday till Saturday, 1-6 pm
“De blik van De Ridder werkt aanstekelijk, zijn eigengereid kijkkader maakt alle verschil. De natuur die De Ridder fotografeert kan in Afrika zijn, in Amerika, of gewoon om de hoek in Amsterdam-Noord. Maar in alle gevallen is ze tijdloos, teruggebracht tot de essentie.” – Machteld Leij, Kunstbeeld, March 2009
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