Utrecht, august 2016
CRAIGIE HORSFIELD: HOW THE
WORLD OCCURS
Centraal Museum presents the overwhelming artwork of pioneering,
British contemporary artist
On 30 October 2016, the solo exhibition Craigie Horsfield: How the world occurs
opens at Centraal Museum in Utrecht. Craigie Horsfield is known for his
profoundly moving images of individuals and groups of people, as well as
atmospheric representations of landscapes, often produced as tapestries on an
epic scale. Following exhibitions in New York, London, Paris, Sydney and Antwerp,
Centraal Museum presents the artist’s largest solo exhibition in the Netherlands
to date. With around forty works in a range of media, including photography,
tapestry, fresco technique and a new site-specific sound work, the museum gives
you the opportunity to reflect on your relationship to the world and how you
perceive the world.
Craigie Horsfield: “We together make art in our reading, our attention, our
recognition and in the ways in which our experience is translated. We generate
the consequences, which realize art’s meanings. We as the audience, the viewers
or readers, make the work in and through our present.”
Edwin Jacobs, artistic director of Centraal Museum: “When I first saw Horsfield’s
work in 2010, I was stunned by the impact of his images. His work combines the
mysticism and symbolism of the Modern Realists with the vivid play of dark and
light, familiar from the 17th-century Caravaggisti painters.”
About Craigie Horsfield
Craigie Horsfield was born in Cambridge, UK, in 1949 and has lived and worked in
Krakow, London, Barcelona, Naples, Madrid and New York. He first gained attention
Mailing Address
Postbus 2106
3500 GC Utrecht
Museum address
Nicolaaskerkhof 10
3512 XC Utrecht
Visiting Address
Agnietenstraat 3
3512 XA Utrecht
Contact
T +31 (0)30 236 2362
centraalmuseum.nl
and acclaim for his black and white photographic portraits. Begun in the 1970s
and printed in the 1980s and 90s, these were large-scale, unique prints and
involved extensive handwork in the darkroom during the images’ exposure and
development stages. Horsfield is one of several artists — others include Thomas
Struth and Jeff Wall — whose conceptual and technical innovations helped to
reposition photography at the forefront of international contemporary art
practice in the late 1980s. Horsfield’s fascination for the concept of ‘relation’
- the connection between people, between ourselves and the world, but also how
history shapes our life as a dimension of the present and how we in turn make up
part of history - has played a key role in his work and one which he has helped
to develop over the years.
More about the exhibition
Craigie Horsfield: How the World Occurs is divided into ten sections and each
section is grouped around one key work or concept. Rich themes and genres tie in
to and develop Craigie Horsfield’s ongoing interest in portraiture, still lives,
human gatherings - rituals and celebrations as well as war and destruction.
Craigie Horsfield: “I began from a seemingly distant point: a sonata by the
composer Heinrich Biber written in the 18th century and from a fresco on the wall
of a Villa at Pompeii. The works in the exhibition, as the show itself, are
concerned with ideas that have informed my thought through my lifetime. Notions
of relation and being, of slow time and the present, of conversation and the
common place, the nature of consciousness and representation, materiality and the
phenomenal world. The works and the exhibition can be read as a novel might be,
or a piece of music.”
Five major tapestries are on display in the exhibition, including Broadway, 14th
day, 18 minutes after dusk. New York, September 2001. The tapestries were begun
in 2008 as a narrative device – the literal weaving together of strands that take
on meaning in the relationship of threads. Unlike a photographic surface, that of
the tapestry is densely present and its’ qualities are not first of all concerned
with the evanescence of light, but with the physical surface – the skin of
things. Made in close cooperation with Flanders Tapestries in Belgium, these
large-scale weavings have come to be an important part of Horsfield’s practice.
"Among Craigie Horsfield’s magisterial, sumptuously detailed recent tapestries
are three nocturnes. All are landscapes, in subject and orientation; the dominant
tonality of each is deep twilight. Big enough to walk into, they are at once
forbidding and profoundly seductive. Indeed standing in front of them we feel
ourselves already pulled into the field of their specific gravity, their
atmosphere." Nancy Princenthal
The exhibition is co-curated by Edwin Jacobs, artistic director of Centraal
Museum and Charlotte Schepke, director of Large Glass, London. The design of the
exhibition (by Kummer & Herrman) will guide visitors through the exhibition.
Soundscape
Craigie Horsfield: How the World Occurs is set within a soundwork that the artist
created with the Dutch composer Reinier Rietveld (of Kytopia) with whom he has
worked for more than 20 years on sound installations. The audio work consists of
20 plus voices, found sound, recorded music and improvisations for 24 channels.
It will be installed and audible throughout the galleries. The piece’s duration
is six hours – precisely covering the museum’s opening hours.
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Craigie Horsfield and Utrecht
The exhibition is the result of a long-term collaboration between Horsfield and
Centraal Museum. Previously, the museum worked with the artist on a social
project in the city of Utrecht, for which he made portraits with thirty people
who live in and around Utrecht. For these portraits he was asked to draw
inspiration from art works in the museum’s collections. These portraits will form
a central part of the exhibition and are shown here for the first time.
International
The exhibition runs from 30 October to 5 February 2017 in Centraal Museum. It
will then travel to MASI Lugano in Switzerland (11 March – 2 July 2017).
Catalogue
A catalogue will accompany the exhibition, containing an overview of Craigie
Horsfield’s work on the project and essays by the American writer and critic
Nancy Princenthal and by Bruno Fornari, curator of the Museum voor Schone Kunsten
in Ghent.
Note for editors
Images and the press release can be downloaded from
www.centraalmuseum.nl/en/press. For more information, please contact Kelly
Leeuwis, marketing & communication, via [email protected].
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