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Marc Marc & Sergey Maloutine
Moscow 2001
Exhibition & 7 days model action
Marc Marc invites the Dutch artist Luc van de Hoeven to have an exhibition in Moscow with his paintings (serial named "Dangerous Lips"). Together with Sergey Maloutine from gallery Art-Life in Moscow they agree on organizing a 7 days model action. In januari 2001 both the exhibition and the model action took place.
First, read the review in the Russian 'Cultural Newspaper'. Then, read the diary of Marc Marc about it.

Translation from Russian to English

Newspaper: Culture (Kultura)
Issue no.: 12
Date: March 29 - April 4, 2001.
Section: Theatre + Palette

Article: A LAMBENT DUTCH HUMOUR
Conceptual performances of Luke van der Hoeven in Moscow

 

Photo: all spectators who have come to the exhibition
of van der Hoeven, suddenly became artists

The cultural relations between Russia and Holland does not interrupt, are neither in a thaw, nor in a frost, and neither nor at a period of global warming. Which confirms the creativity of Luke van der Hoeven, the artist from Amsterdam.

Luke van der Hoeven lives in Holland, in the country, struggling with water disasters over the centuries; after all, the most part of Holland is situated below sea level. The multi-kilometer dam Afsluitdijk with cascades surrounds the country from the north, since the end of twenties separating Amsterdam, situating on the coasts, already of the former sea gulfs of "inland sea" - Ijsselmeer and Markermeer , - from threatening disasters of the Atlantic. High dunes near the city The Hague protect the coast of La Manche for many centuries, and the water from numerous rivulets is pumped over here through dunes since the period of windmills. At last, the broad river delta formed in the south of the country by the Rhine , Mass and , have been reliably protected by a huge complex of hydraulic engineering structures of the Schelde Deltaplan in the seventies - a plan for protecting the delta. But, forecasts related with the global warming, ice thawing in Greenland and reduction of ice shell of the Antarctic Continent, and also the vibrations of tectonic slabs in the North of Europe, threatens new experiences to the small country. About this, a new series of the Dutch artist has been exhibited in the Moscow studio "Art Life" situated in Bolshaya Spasskaya.

The series is called "Holland B.V." Speaking in Russian, it is something like "ZAO (JSC)" Holland".

In one of the paintings, a man in a business suit boisterously talking about something on the mobile telephone, watching the news, flashing on the portable TV screen. On the left hand he is wearing a "Rolex" watch. It would seem, that he is "packed" in a lace, so that with a comfort and with an extreme accuracy to identify himself in time and space. But the man in the painting is almost into the water up to his neck.

"The Water is coming. A little more, and the man will find himself as a helpless child in hands of all-mighty disaster", - says the Dutch painter. "And all these "toys" will not help him". Here the water is also a symbol of a certain completed development. "Holland B.V." is functioning as something like a high-tech corporation having a closed-type production cycle. And on the verge of the new millennium the people will be engrossed in thoughts: what is next?

The other canvas of the artist "Lips are dangerous" indicates the fragility of mutual relation of the people in the world of global communications. Lips of two characters are displayed in close up. Between them - a tense wire is clamped in teeth, on which, a tiny rope-walker balances. The rope-walker can fall, and then the man will not receive the message coming out from the interlocutor.

Luke van der Hoeven has also organized an original performance in Moscow. He decided to attach all the spectators who visited his Moscow exhibition introduce with his creativity. Together with his friend, Dutch artist Marc Marc, he organized a performance on the walls of the studio "Art Life", which has named "Models". On each working days of the exhibition of Luke van der Hoeven, a podium posing with (artist's) models was arranged in the center of the hall and all visitors received pencils and papers for drawing, even everybody were provided with drinks and snacks necessary for long-continued creative process.

"As a compensation for the means, spent by the Dutch", - speaks, the curator of the studio Sergey Malioutin with a smile - "each of the participants of the performance has to present the organizers from the Netherlands two sketches".

"We have chosen the works which are very different in style". "In Spring they will be displayed in the Russian graphics exhibition in the gallery "Art-Agat" in Amsterdam"

Author: Iskander Kyzeev

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Diary

View collection of drawings

 Idea

Amsterdam 2000. At a friendly visit to the studio of Luc, I ask him if he feels like going into an adventure and shows his paintings in Moscow. Luc just is busy with a serial of 'Lips' and I think that these paintings would be nice to exhibit in Moscow - a city where they are not used to this kind of paintings - a city where adventure still is possible - a city of curiosity. Luc proposes to also do model painting and after communicating with Sergey in Moscow we have formed the idea to turn it into an exhibition of Luc and an act of 7 days with 2 models. The first 3 days of the model action Luc and the Russian painter Michael Stereoff are going to give a painting performance with the models for audience and the following 4 days the audience can join with drawing the models.

 Dutch

I went to Moscow close to X-mas, as I usually do, for a staying of two months. Two weeks time to prepare for our act in a quiet inconvenient time period because most people then are busy with holidays and thus not so open for ideas which put them to work. I had a request for supporting funding by the Dutch embassy prepared and it turned out that it was hard to have this treated on time. It all is so bureaucratic and makes me wonder: where is that legendary feeling of the Dutch to explore new worlds by taken an adventure. Acting in Moscow beyond the establishment of Dutch institution is screaming for a different Dutch Cultural policy or at least a special 'squad' for the coming along occasions wherein nothing is guaranteed and improvisation with small budgets is simply worth the deal. The fear by the institutions that a project may fail and thus would be negative for their status is a destructive way of thinking which keeps all reel creativity and progression outdoors. In our case the Dutch committee for Culture decided that our project was not interesting based on the fact that the paintings of Luc were considered not to be innovative and in the context of our Moscow project the focus with the two models was too much on nudity. How can a community of pretentious Dutch people judge about a project in Moscow? Well, they can not! But, it seem to be a Dutch policy to grant those project they understand from there bureau with the outlook through a mill. Nevertheless, I simply decided to go ahead with this project because I thought it would be a good project to execute.

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 Naakt
Veel mensen zijn op komen dagen voor de opening voor de expositie van Luc van der Hoeven en voor het meemaken van de eerste actie waarbij het publiek kan toe kijken hoe twee kunstenaars, Luc en Michael Stereoff twee naaktmodellen zullen gaan schilderen.
         Luc is geconcentreerd. Misja een beetje teut maar toch nog in goede doen. De modellen zijn zenuwachtig en willen hun slipje aan houden want de velen ogen die op hen gericht zijn maakt hen preuts. Als zijnde degene die de modellen onder controle zou moeten hebben sta ik toe dat deze eerste sessie verloopt volgens hun wensen (slipje aan). Maar, zoals ook Luc later zou opmerken was dit geen goed idee. Hun lichamen worden 'gebroken' door die zwarte slipjes. Alsof er vier modellen zijn in plaats van twee.

De avond is een succes. Ee heerst een goede atmosfeer tussen publiek en de kunstenaars. Het is ook spannend want wellicht de eerste keer dat zoiets zich hier voordoet: een open sessie waarin het publiek als het ware voyeur speelt. Het heeft iets van een theaterstuk.
         Sasja van 15 jaar is in het begin verbijsterd bij het zien van die twee naakte meisjes voor het publiek die tonen wat zij net heeft ontdekt - dat wat beschermt dient te worden tegen blikken van buitenstaanders (mannen). Naakt is niet iets wat zomaar prijs wordt gegeven.


        

 2e sessie & oud nieuwjaar party

Om zeven uur 's avonds vangt onze tweede sessie aan. Veel publiek komt ook niet opdagen tijdens deze sessie maar de sfeer is goed. De modellen zijn inmiddels een beetje meer gewend aan de voor hen ongewone situatie en hebben hun slipje inmiddels uitgetrokken en zijn nu echt naaktmodel zoals het hoort. Misja is niet van de partij. Hij was de dag ervoor dusdanig dronken geworden dat we besloten voor hem en vervanger te zoeken. In allerijl vonden we Andrej bereidt om te komen tekenen als counterpart voor Luc.

 

Eenmaal de sessie voorbij, op het oude nieuwjaar afstevenend, komen de gasten binnen voor een party die in opbouw is. Een aantal van hen was gisteren aanwezig maar het grootste deel is gekomen omdat ze trouwe bezoekers zijn op de 'oude nieuwjaars' vieringen bij Sergej. Er wordt natuurlijk verhaalt over de actie met modellen opdat iedereen weet dat ze nog 5 keer de kans hebben om het mee te maken.

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