Monday, February 21, 2011

Trip of Sloth - Rotterdam



My friends kindly invited me over to their home in Rotterdam during the holidays. It was a wonderul trip
not to do too much, just browsing around locally. The town of Rotterdam looks interesting, full of Dutch bikes, some snow piled up, more modern architecture.. In the middle of the shopping area, the Paul McCarthy's Santa Claus with a Buttplug was welcoming the holiday hangouts. It was a pleasant surprise for me to see it again after my last EU trip. He had been standing in front of the Basel art fair buliding 3 years ago.


The temporary? bakery behind the black santa was selling donuts and pastries. I tried both, the donut was kinda chewy.



Boijmans van Beuningen was a pretty cool museum. The museum collection goes from the Middle Age to contemporary,
featuring lots of design stuff (furtniture, decorative arts, etc.) The self-coat check at the entrance was stunning,
it's like a forest of hundreds of clothes hangers hovering over the ceiling. We pull the string when we pick up our own coats.
Leaving your $$$$$ far coat wouldn't be highly recommended though..





They had a special exhibit of the Dutch industrial designer Hella Jongerius. Again, I had another unexpected re-encouter
with something I had seen in the the last EU trip: Adorable porcelain animals on the dish from Munich! I had only noted it was by Nymphenburg back then but it was actually the collaboration with Jongerius.




Rotterdam must be A CALL from above I felt..when I found out a solo show of Cosima von Bonin going on at Witte de With.
She is one of my favorite artists since Documenta 12 (see my past blog). The exhibition "Far Niente" literally addressed the
sweetness of Doing Nothing featuring her signature human size stuffed doll sculptures and played subtle music that was mixture of different sounds, from techno to voodoo all at once. Underneath the sound system, the big white chick on the pink bomb vomits. I loved it. There will be another solo show of hers at NY's Friedrich Petzel from March 31st.



Witte de With had a little reading floor with their publications all installed on the wall. They somehow made the back covers
magnetic so they can stick to another magnet behind the wall. Neat.


The day time in Rotterdam was extremely short in December-January. The sun was out only from 10am to 4pm as max so nothing much I could do. I rather enjoyed the lazy itinerary by visiting other cities Delft, Amsterdam and Brussels after Rotterdam..

Paul McCarthy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_McCarthy
Boijmans van Beuningen www.boijmans.nl/en/
Hella Jongerius http://www.jongeriuslab.com/
Witte de With www.wdw.nl/
Cosima von Bonin at Documenta 12 http://www.documenta.de/uebersichtsdetails.html?L=1&gk=C&level=&knr=2
Cosima von Bonin at Friedrich Petzel www.petzel.com/artists/cosima-von-bonin/