Jan Eric Visser, Sustaining Small Acts

Group exhibition, TENT Rotterdam, NL
curated by Anke Bangma
25 March – 20 August 2023

 

We are delighted to announce Jan Eric Visser’s participation in a group exhibition, Sustaining Small Acts, at TENT Rotterdam, along with the artiststs Lara Almarcegui, Sol Archer, Lucie Havel, Jake Kelly, Carolin Lange & Dico Kruijsse.

 

The artists taking part in the exhibition develop their work from the connection with their physical environment. Their work often springs from what they find close to home, in the material of their daily surroundings: their own household waste, the weeds in the city, the ground under their feet. This everyday material is entwined with fundamental questions. Questions about humans as the only animals that foul their own nest, with planetary consequences. About the legacies of the western anthropocentric worldview, that can only measure the value of other living beings in terms of human use and gain – claiming and trading ownership and the right to exploit the earth.

 

Equally important to these artists is the consideration of how they can work from an awareness of the ecological imprint of their actions and nurture a different sensibility. Their work is not only about offering stories and perspectives, it is about more than representation: it is also about the resources, processes and relations they can cultivate, or choose to avoid, halt or redirect in their artistic production.

 

As an inseparable part of their practice, they explore very concrete material, technical, chemical, legal and social possibilities for change—offering what could be seen as action perspectives. Their actions are often deliberately humble–letting a place be, avoiding toxic substances, wasting nothing, repurposing fallen branches, collaborating with a plant. But underlying such small acts is often a consequent commitment, a persistent effort, and a daily practicing of other ways of acting and being in the world.

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