Requiems for a reality, 2020-2021, Kinetic sound installation. 300 cm x 60 cm x 155 cm
Various durations, Pianola, Aluminum frame, Official autopsy report of 'Christopher Wallace' a.k.a 'The notorious B.I.G, drilling machine
Prospects, Mondriaan Fonds Toont Talent, Van Nelle Factory, Rotterdam, NL (2021)
Curated by Johan Gustavsson
"The piano doesn't murder the player, if it doesn't like the music." With this quote from Dr. Robert Ford from the television series Westworld, Domas van Wijk (1993) opens his artist statement. It could hardly be more appropriate, given the work proposed here: a player piano that plays the autopsy reports of shot musicians. The perforated sheet music driving the keys is based on the gunshot wounds in the body diagrams of Christopher Wallace a.k.a 'The notorious B.I.G' and Tupac Amaru Shakur. For conspiracy theorists, the murder of both rappers still gives rise to theories that must prove that their deaths were staged. For example, the posthumously released records of Tupac and his 3D appearance during a hologram concert give rise to claims that he is still alive and making music. This mystery is in line with the ghostly effect that Van Wijk attributes to player pianos. "As if the ghosts of both musicians are still literally wandering the earth, their last speculative moments are turned into what they wanted to be remembered for: music."
This theme touches on the fascination that Van Wijk seeks in all his work: "the shadowy and ever-blurring dividing line between man and machine, real and fake, authenticity and counterfeit, life and death." He calls himself a mediator or trickster who makes new connections between contrasting world, existing objects and machines. . "Although my authorship is indirectly present in the choice and bringing together of the different elements, they seem to have a life of their own. I use this effect in my art to suggest a certain animation of dead matter – or animism."
Left-handed Poem, 2022, Performance of Objects, Various Durations
Jackets, Brothers, Tools & Others, Curated by Kiki Petratou, for Apertura Madrid Gallery Weekend, at Salón, Madrid, ES (2022)
Left-handed Poem, Domas van Wijk's contribution for this exhibition is a work realized during a two-week residency in Rotterdam in 'the Hang 5', which is a very short time comparing to his usual way of working. The title is inspired by a radio broadcast featuring a poet who labelled his new collection as left-handed poems, written in a very short time with not too much seriousness referring to their short, somewhat nonchalant character, as if they were written with his left hand.
Domas felt immediately identified with this way of working and thought the 'leather jacket with chimes project' was also a left-handed poem.
In his work he tends to fuse dualistic topics like 'mind-matter'/ 'culture-nature'/ 'life-death', as both sides always heavily depend on one another. The viewpoint that there exists some sharp division holds in his opinion no future.
Van Wijk believes objects have a life that transcends the human perception, but also that the human perception is both created and shaped by this transcending existence - which in turn is formed by human existence. In this respect, his work addresses the duality - the reciprocal influence - between the object and its viewers' perception. It's because of this that he is not interested in forcing his inner perception onto matter, shaping it into the likings of his own thoughts. Instead, he is more captivated by the active-power materials hold within themselves. In this way fragments of his ideas reflect back to him in the form of pre-existing objects. While putting these objects in relation to one another, he tries to search for the point where the objects start to behave independently, claiming some kind of agency of their own.
For Van Wijk is a matter of mediation, bringing the individual objects together in a sculptural assemblage, in which animism serves to prioritise the carrier as the content and the content as the carrier equally. To him, 'being' is a consequence of becoming. Even in the smallest of particles, matter needs time to manifest itself. That is to say: No ''matter'' how still an object may seem, it is actually in motion and part of a process. This builds up to why his work is mostly a performance of things; becoming together something novel; something that is greater than the sum of its parts. For we create but also emerge from stuff.
Fake Newsstand, 2021, landscape art, 254 x 150 x 150 cm, Steel and glass aquarium, wood roof, 6000L Salt water, newspapers, newspaper newspaper racks
IJsselbiënnale 2021, Curated by Mieke Komeijn
Desert Rose /Woestijnroos, 2021, Performance of Objects, Process/sound installation, various dimensions and Various Durations, Various technical instruments like subwoofers, mixer, records and record players, rooftop car fan's and a selection of stones, minerals and other archaeological objects, and more
Kunstenlab, Deventer (2021)
Curated by Aalt van der Glind
The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife, 2019, Performance of Objects, Process/sound installation, Various dimensions, but approx: 200 cm x 50 x 50 and Various Durations, Base-guitar wrapped in stretchable water hoses connected to a water lock and hanging in a wooden coat rack.
Installation view:
'Movement is Trouble' (2019) Factor 44, Antwerpen, BE
Curated by Domas van Wijk en Lin Geritsen
A green expandable water hose is wrapped around coat rack holding an electric bass guitar mid air. A time based water pump is pressing, on a programmed interval, water in and out of the hoses, making them to slowly expend and shrink. This results in the dropping and again lifting of the bass guitar over and over again. Subtle noises appear when the hoses slide and squeeze over the strings of the bass guitar.
2-12-1960 † 12-08-1988
, 2018,
Kinetic video installation, Various dimensions and Various Durations, Blade-less fans, VCR Tape, VCR Player, flatscreen lcd TV
Exposition Z, Schloss Ringeberg, De (2019)
Curated by Marian Stindt & Youri David Appelo
Tower of things, 2019, Performance of Objects, 185 x 50 x35 cm, Various Durations
DO AN AL INS TALL, Curated by Peter Fengler, organised by De Player Rotterdam at JOEY RAMONE, Rotterdam, NL (2019)
Leaving Surfaces, 2018, Layers of spray-paint, 24 x 1,2 x 15 cm
Presented at the exhibition Waste of Time, Curated by Adelheid Smit & Thorsten Schneider
Museum het Valkhof, Nijmegen, NL (2018)
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Dualities | Article by Julia Flamingo