Arnoud Holleman

Amsterdam — Thursday 28 March, 2024
nl / en

Captured

A film about seeing and being seen

In Captured, makers Arnoud Holleman and Batya Wolff show the complicated handling of photography in Batya's family. Her father Max Wolff (b. 1926) bought a camera after the war. Photography became his coping mechanism for dealing with war trauma, but while photographing, the war also remained ever-present in the home. That put a damper on the life of his daughter, who grew up in front of his lens. Can she free herself from a war that ended long before she was born?

Krijn Giezen - Lost and Found

MacGuffin Magazine #9

The heap of rubble is overgrown with brambles, but with a bit of cautious climbing I make it to the top of what was once the shed. Chunks of yellow and red brick, a section of window frame, an assortment of rooftiles, a piece of lead flashing, a moss-covered chair, a dented aluminium pan – what a loss.

Family and Friends

seven drawings

Recent Me Too scandals have led to two powerful affects in people: anger and shame. Those two affects are intimately related, because anger is often expressed by inflicting shame on the person at whom the anger is directed, as in ‘shame on you!’ We punish people by making them shameful. (Ernst van Alphen in SHAME! and Masculinity)

Broken Thinker

collaboration with Gert Jan Kocken

The Thinker by Auguste Rodin is an iconic misunderstanding. Since its creation in 1881, it has been said that the sculpture expresses the activity of thinking, while it merely expresses the pose of thinking. Once you realize, the Thinker is an empty form on which anyone may project his or her thoughts. This has led to a range of ideas - and clichés - about man who reflects on his existence.

Platitudes

De Gids Literary Magazine

Every artisthood is teeming with platitudes. Repetitive anecdotes, topoi, that give every artist biography the same setup: he or she, always alone; real talent eludes schooling; thousands shouted out, only a handful chosen. Large or small talent, they all put their lives at stake for something that wants to transcend life. Art goes before offspring, reaches beyond death.

Another Erased Drawing

drawing

Much of what I do is hybrid and/or has little focus on the maker(s), but what happens on paper is good old self-expression. Therefore, for years, drawing and making collages did not mix with the rest of my work, until I discovered that you can decide to neglect this separation.

Unqualified

drawing

To anyone with a burnout I say: start drawing. Not with a plan, or an idea, or an expectation, or an ambition, but simply drawing. Go back and forth over the paper, with pencil or chalk, like a stroll in the neighborhood. This is how hand, head and heart will reconnect.

Introducing

animation

The murmuring multitude of fellow artists that I know, admire, loathe, slept with, read about, write about, follow on Instagram, underestimate, overestimate, avoid, talk to, stalk, ignore, study, am inspired by, steal from, ought to know more about, compare, compete, collaborate and blend in with.

The Trouble With Value

Onomatopee, Eindhoven

Curator Kris Dittel writes: What practices bring us closer to understanding the potential of art to represent different notions of value in the contemporary? How can we counter the certain apathy of the contemporary to engage with positions that resist this mood and present us with challenging perspectives on value? The project attempts to locate artistic and institutional practices that offer viewpoints beyond the strategy of blending-in and conforming to the rules.

Immovably Centred

De Appel, Amsterdam

At De Appel, Arnoud Holleman invites actors, curators and museum directors to read his text. The title "Immovably Centred" derives from the motto that Rainer Maria Rilke used for his biography about Auguste Rodin: 'The hero is he who is immovably centred'. Rilke puts Rodin on a pedestal as a superhuman genius, Arnoud Holleman stages a contemporary artist who, still, identifies with this kind of artistry.

My Dad Playing Piano

free CD

When my dad died we found comfort in sorting out his belongings. The closet in his study kept the usual mix of essential and trivial: drawings from high school, student paraphernalia and tons of paper work from his job as a teacher. In an old shoebox we found a microphone and some old music cassettes. When he had retired, eight years before his death, he picked up playing the piano again, took lessons and studied every day. Sometimes he would make a recording of the pieces that he played, as a reality check.

Call me

immaterial artwork, city of Zwolle

It's either filthy thoughts or intellectual blah-blah, and nothing in between. Look closer. More closer. Look at me! You hear me?! If there's any reason for me to be ashamed, it's you. The only reason I'm standing in front of the town hall is because I happened to have been 'created' by a world-famous sculptor: Rodin, the genius of deep emotions and existential gestures. Yeah right. The way I'm standing here, Rodin is the only person who's never once laid a finger on me.

I Shot Madonna

media recycling

When she comes past I click away hysterically. Not even with the intention of getting her picture but I'm in the press enclosure and have to pretend that I'm a photographer. I'm so occupied with the camera and she goes by so fast that I hardly catch a glimpse of her. The print I have made is blurred. Also that night was the first time Madonna showed up with a black hairdo instead of her usual blonde, so nobody recognizes her on the photo.

Bert Luttjeboer

drawing, photo, text

I was intrigued by the fact that I had to work for hours or days or weeks on end and would still fail to come anywhere close to what the camera had seen in a split second. One night, after a long day of working with minute precision and concentration, I went out to a bar and ran into Bert.

Time Warp

collaboration with Driessens/Verstappen, Rotterdam

A cinematic report on the processes of growth and change taking place on W.G. Witteveenplein in Rotterdam. Each film begins with the construction of the park in early 2003 and shows the various changes that have taken place so far. The films are supplemented four times a year with new material. This will result in five twelve-minute films in 2023.

Polaroid

edition

Polaroid of the former Polaroid factory in Enschede. I photographed the logo in 2001 as research for 'Wij', an exhibition at Kunstvereniging Diepenheim investigating the cultural identity of the Twente region. The factory closed in 2008 and the text sign has been removed in 2009. Polaroid is an edition of 20, a few are still for sale.

Unframed Drawing

In later years, after being trained as a visual artist, I got interested in the differences and parallels between drawing and photography. When I redrew a photograph of a young boy looking at a horizontal piece of paper, I re-experienced something of that primitive power of the image: the boy and I coincided and somewhere inbetween, reality as such was redefined as an object for exhibition.

Nieuwkomer

online photo documentary

For months after I first stood on that little bridge, I continued to circle around the windmills. Not only with my camera, but also with a microphone. When you look closer, the polder turns out to be an arena of conflicting interests. The cluttering of the landscape stands in opposition to climatological necessity; economic and ecological interests are locking horns for dominance; innovation oriented towards the future has to compete with the appreciation for history. The counter argument is always around the corner.

Krijn Giezen - in memoriam

Metropolis M magazine

The niche he created for himself testifies to a love-hate relationship with art, which you see reflected in the work. Art gives freedom, but it is also overcoded. In the end it’s just as effective at locking the spirit up again, with rules that can be as Kafkaesque and constraining as the excessive bureaucracy that he continually had to deal with as a landscape artist.

Herman Heijermans

drawings, photo

At the time my boyfriend was writing a biography of the Dutch playwright Herman Heijermans, who lived from 1864 to 1924. Heijermans was all over the house, in books and in pictures. I choose this one, because of how he stares into the camera. I drew two 'prints' next to the original one and framed them individually.

Susan Sontag

drawing, photo, text

I've always thought of photography as something very magical and it is my belief that this is based on a genuine experience: in my early childhood there must have been no sharp distinction between a real thing and its image - in the same way that kids see themselves as inseparable from their mother until the age of three, I thought that object and image were simply two different manifestations of the same energy.

Now

Club Donny magazine #1

What happens is that the grit under your feet mixes with the noise in your head. And in the monotony of the constant succession of footsteps, residual thoughts escape like intestinal slugs. Initially this is unpleasant. The physical exertion is a booster, the cadence of your breathing and your footsteps become the haunted baseline under the story of your life, as you recount it to yourself at that moment.

Artists Anonymous

Lowlands pop festival

For the last couple of years in a row, artists had been invited who felt at home in a big show environment. This had thrown up a number of lively and playful installations, but this year the budding tradition was in jeopardy: for a variety of reasons there was next to no money for art projects. The only kitty in the budget that might be called upon had been set aside for the printing of the half a million paper napkins that were to be used during the festival.

10.000 lives

Gwangju Biennale, South Korea

As an artist and writer, Arnoud Holleman's extraordinarily diverse output is connected by a strong thematic concern with the life and significance of images. Often this concern is manifested through acts of appropriation that transform an image's meaning through a shift in context, or a removal of contextual elements. This concern with the lives of images has also led him to create works that explore the historical prohibitions on image making.

Threshold

found object

Found in a container in Delft, by a fellow student at the academy. Swapped for an easel and a modeling stand. After the threshold was worn out on one side, it was turned around, after which the other side started to wear out as well. It remains unknown how long this process has been going on altogether. Maybe it once belonged to the house of Vermeer.

Lauren & Claudia

collage, double sided

Interview covergirl Lauren Hutton was photographed by Francesco Scavullo in 1973. She's wearing Galanos - from his exciting fall 1973 collection. Accessorized by Galanos, makeup by Way Bandy, hair by Rick Gilette. The photo was re-photographed by Anuschka Blommers and Niels Schumm in 2003, with model Uta Eichhorn posing as Re-Magazine covergirl Claudia. She's wearing a black dress by Hermès. Styling by Katja Rahlwes, makeup by Renata Mandic.

Roosegaarde and Rodin

Metropolis M magazine

It’s fascinating to see how the myth of Rodin permits such a transformation in image-building, the reason being that myths are inconstant in nature, to the point of mendacity. Immortality doesn’t exist, after all, but myths are legitimate as a faith construct. Art is faith packaged as craft.

Monsieur Holleman is certainly not Andy Warhol

De Groene Amsterdammer Magazine

Beeldconsumptie. Beeldproductie. Beelddistributie. In de afgelopen decennia zijn deze drie steeds meer met elkaar verweven geraakt. Overtreedt de hergebruikende kunstenaar de wet? Want wie is de eigenaar van beelden? De film Museum, te zien in het Frans Halsmuseum in Haarlem, biedt inzicht. Tekst en beeld Arnoud Holleman, Groene Amsterdammer 25 februari 2015 - verschenen in nr. 9

K48-3 Teenage Rebel: The Bedroom Show

Galerie du Jour - agnès b., Paris.

In a flash of curatorial genius Scott Hug styled the gallery as a teenage bedroom, where he began living after filling the space with a bunch of period artefacts and works by about 70 of his pals. As could be expected, the quality of the work varied immensely. More interestingly, the show's achievement and shortfalls lay simultaneously in Hug's confusion of 'official' artwork with the rest of the set dressings.

Just in Time!

Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam

Just in Time (JIT) is the name of an economic principle, based on producing the right component at the right place at the right moment, in order to prevent waste. Artists manage their time in the opposite manner. They deliberately choose indirection, and are open to mistakes and unexpected tangents. Guest curator Kopsa asked the artists to define what they regarded as 'necessary'.

Re-Magazine

collaboration with Jop van Bennekom

Re-Magazine's great virtue is its willingness to expose sentiments that seldom find public expression, most often relating to the apparently trivial experiences and memories that make up the larger part of existence. Alongside this editorial idiosyncrasy, it is beautifully designed and photographed, each issue adopting a form to suit its subject - Emily King, Frieze, October 2003.

Tekeningen 1995 - 1997

drawings

Met een zweepje onder z'n oksels geklemd 'berijdt' een naakte man een op z'n kop staand paard. Terwijl hij met z'n anus over de paardenlul glijdt, perst een eveneens naakte vrouw zich met moeite in het poepgat van het rijdier. Om haar daad kracht bij te zetten, duwt ze met haar hand tegen een denkbeeldige muur - een muur die tevens de kadrering vormt van het op papier getekende seksspelletje. (Nathalie Faber - Het Parool 3-2-1998)

Aaltje Kraak

re-staging of city fire, Hardenberg

In Marslaan, a row of five 1960s houses was waiting to be demolished. The new building standard in the city had been raised to four stories, so these houses no longer sufficed in that spot. The large windows that had once made the houses so modern were now boarded up. On the blank wood of the underlayment along the full length of the block was written in spray paint: Get rid of that crap!

Radio Balzac

Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven

De Balzac van Auguste Rodin staat vanaf 1 februari in Het Oog in het van Abbemuseum, als special guest in een installatie van Arnoud Holleman. In deze tijdelijke opstelling draait het beeld langzaam rond. Bezoekers kunnen het beeld van alle kanten bekijken en de 19e eeuwse schrijver kijkt ondertussen rond, naar onze tijd. Via een online radiozender ? Radio Balzac ? worden meningen, discussies en andere inzichten over het beeld verzameld en uitgezonden.

We

Kunstvereniging Diepenheim and Rijksmuseum Twenthe, Enschede

The definition of the word definition is: 'the description of the essence of something in one or two highly precise and succinctly formulated sentences.' That is by no means easy, and we certainly don't pretend to be able to do so. Nevertheless, there are a lot of characteristics that we find interesting and that we come up against in wondering about what might be typical of the region known as Twente. But those things aren't so much absolute as they are relative.

In Memory Of Things To Come

time capsule, Rotterdam

The history of the Wilhelminasteen began on 30 May 1891 when the 10-year-old Queen Wilhelmina and Queen Mother Emma visited Rotterdam. To celebrate the occasion, hundreds of boats sailed on the Maas and 3,000 schoolchildren performed an aubade. The brand-new little Queen will give her name to the Wilhelmina Quay and the act that goes with it is a stone-laying ceremony.

Driving Miss Palmen

VPRO television

I understand why you want to be a writer. It?s better to be mediocre and famous than just being mediocre. But the difference between you and me is that I?m able to create a character of myself in a story I choose to live in. And you, I?m sorry to say, are not. That makes me a writer and you just a character in someone elses plot. And as for my work: The big misunderstanding about my work is that critics keep comparing the fictious Connie Palmen with the real Connie Palmen, instead of comparing her to other great characters in litterature, like Madame Bovary, or Lolita...

Melanchotopia

curated by Nicolaus Schafhausen and Anne-Claire Schmitz

Witte de With's Melanchotopia is an exhibition that invites more than forty international artists to work with different venues in the city-center of Rotterdam. From large-scale interventions to very simple gestures, Melanchotopia supports a range of artistic practices that go beyond the classical approach to displaying art in public space. Working with the existing dynamics of the city, Witte de With's intention is to bring forward the diverse layers of daily life in Rotterdam, creating a rich framework for subjective encounters. It is an exhibition about the reality of Rotterdam.

From the Corner of the Eye

Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam

For many artists, sexual orientation is just one of the many significant aspects in their work, but is an aspect which is often ignored in exhibitions and art criticism. From the Corner of the Eye offers an image of contemporary visual arts, seen from a "queer" perspective. In this exhibition, it is hoped that the homosexual gaze will sometimes be emphatically present and at other times will disappear into the background.

Onkenhout

galvanized bronze, text

Staring at the picture of the garden on the postcard I catch a glimpse of my mother in a version of her life that she never lived, one in which Nico had gotten in touch, after that evening out. Perhaps now she'd have a different surname and be sitting by a different fire drinking wine with a different child. In a moment that feels like an oedipal short circuit, I experience something impossible: that I never existed.

Not knowing as a norm

Artist contribution for OPEN Magazine

When Zijlstra speaks, you hear the positive, neoliberal pep talk of Rutte, but also the anti-elitist, anti-globalist, populist talk of Wilders. Not only is radical change required, the existing structure must – as an end in itself – be torn down. In other words, creation and destruction go hand in hand and from Zijlstra’s mouth that sounds astonishingly unisono.

Captured - How to be prepared for the past

A documentary by Batya Wolff and Arnoud Holleman

In the Netherlands, 75% of the Jewish population was killed during the Holocaust. The unique and vast photo archive of the Wolff family embodies almost one hundred years of Jewish family life - before, during and after the war. Seemingly generic family pictures unite and divide the family. For Max, first generation victim of the Nazi's, photography is a coping mechanism to deal with traumatic loss. For Batya and her two sisters, the second generation, the trauma was passed on through his lens.

Marcel

Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking, earth has disappeared. As we will not be able to crash, we will continue flying until we run out of fuel. Well so do something about it you?ve been wining about it for years. Well. Halfway. Everything?s fine. Stay calm. Come on guys what?s the big idea? You know, these days when somebody on the street says ?sorry? it?s a junky. You see you don?t get it. You?re just a character in someone elses plot.

Co*star

Dus toen kreeg ik heel erg de wens, als mens maar ook als kunstenaar, om me te bevrijden van al die dingen... om werkelijk iets nieuws in te slaan. Maar dat gaat niet, want je kan het nieuwe niet bedenken op basis van al die ouwe zooi. Dus ik dacht, ik wil daar van af... en toen bleek dat soap ... bleek een deur te zijn naar... zeg maar dat je die ruimte in je hoofd weer werkelijk leeg zou kunnen maken en als een soort potentie zou kunnen gaan vullen... zelf.

Tijdcapsuledag

Wat weten we nu waar we in 2013 nog geen weet van hadden? In 2014 werd de MH17 uit de lucht geschoten ... werd Rotterdam Centraal Station heropend. In 2015 werd het klimaatakkoord in Parijs ondertekend ... kwam de grote vluchtelingenstroom op gang ... dachten we dat Hillary de eerste vrouwelijke president zou worden. In 2016 stierf David Bowie ... kwam Trump aan de macht. In 2017 werd Feyenoord kampioen! ... ging #MeToo viral.

Het genie werkt - nog steeds

Musee Rodin heeft haar gespletenheid tegenwoordig goed in de hand. Iedereen die er werkt is in zekere zin nog steeds in dienst van Rodin, maar er is ook voortschrijdend inzicht, gebaseerd op wat je 'museale introspectie' kunt noemen. Bij de recente, grondige herinrichting van het museum is genialiteit als oude valkuil zo veel mogelijk vermeden. In plaats daarvan wordt werkelijkheidsbesef betracht, vanuit het besef dat elk eigen gelijk slechts tijdelijk is, in afwachting van (weer) een nieuwe Rodin.