DOMESTIC EXTRAVAGANZA

Solo exhibition by Eva Pel

(Curatorial collaboration with Isfrid Angard Siljehaug)

Calling her work ”soft political” Eva Pel encompasses a peculiar curiosity for human behavior and how it is socially affected and changed in the course of an everyday life. While being trained as both an artist and urban geographer, Eva Pel describes her relation between her former training and her artistic practice by saying; “In a way I am a sociologist. My art is like social research…I don’t want to change people, saying what is good. I don’t want to be moralistic. I want to show. My curiosity for “the other(s)” is actually what is driving me; it is the main thing in my work.”

Eva Pel’s work carries a duality which is communicated through subtle, almost anonymous approach to her subjects (“key collection”, taken from various museum lockers) and site specific, field research based work (during the summer of 2009, she went to New York to conduct her fieldwork to research the celebrations of 400 years relations between New York and the Netherlands which resulted in the self published book ‘Observations of a Celebration NL&NY 2009′, and the talkshow project ‘The Story of the Netherlands’).

 

Among other works, the exhibition will show a never before exhibited key work (An early sculptural work”Sheep in box”) and the new installation Lamps. Removed from the residency of the artist, her assortment of lamps are given a new function in the space of the museum, leaving the artist’s home without artificial lights for the duration of the show.

 

Constructed as a retrospective, Domestic Extravaganza aims to be prospective by showing key works in the oeuvre of Eva Pel’s developing artistic practice, capturing the duality of her work and the context of the Zolder Museum.

 

Eva Pel (1973) lives and works in Amsterdam. She finished Gerrit Rietveld Academy in 2005 and is currently following the master’s program MAR (master artistic research) at the Royal Academy of arts in The Hague. Recent exhibitions include  ‘Tv Talkshow; the story of the Netherlands’, Gallery Witzenhausen NY / Going Dutch, New York (collaboration project with graphic designer Claudia Doms), ‘Kunstvlaai 2010/Art Pie 2010, 1K project space/ de Ekster, Westergasfabriek, Amsterdam, ‘MudPie’, Artistic research on art as art and art and life, W139, Amsterdam,‘Le Milieu’, group show in Meneer de Wit, Amsterdam (co-curated). Her work is in the collection of the De Nederlandsche Bank.

Isfrid Angard Siljehaug (1986) lives and works in Amsterdam. She finished Gerrit Rietveld Academy in 2009. She is currently following the master’s program MAR (master artistic research) at the Royal Academy of arts in The Hague.

*Zolder Museum (zolder=attic) is a museum of contemporary art in Amsterdam.