press release
Simon Lee Gallery is proud t
o announce a solo exhibition of work
by
Dutch
conceptual artist
Bas Jan Ader
,
one of
the most influential artists of his generation. Fo
rty years after the end of his
brief career,
his concise body of
some
thirty
five
work
s
created between 1969 and 1975
continue
s
to inspire artists, writers, curators
and critical thinkers.
T
his exhibition
includes five
of
Ader’s
short
‘falling’
film
s
, shown in their original 16mm fo
r
mat,
alongside
the-- KEY
film from 1974,
Primary Time
. It also includes
related
photo works
and
the seminal work,
I’
m too Sad to T
ell You
,
(1971)
.
The works exhibited reveal
the depth of
Ader’s
investigation into questions of control and
its
surrender
to
the forces of nature, particularly in relation to the creative process and strategies of composition.
“
When I fell off the roof of my hou
se, or into the canal, it was because gravity made itself master over me
”.
In
the film
Fall 1
,
Los Angeles
,
(
1970
)
,
the camera is focused on the front of Ader’s home in Claremont, with
the
artist
sitting on a chair
straddled across the top of the roof before falling and
crashing in
to
the
garden
.
In
Fall 2
,
Amsterdam
,
(
1970
)
,
Ader
framed for camera a section of the Reguliersgracht canal, a canal bridge, path and trees,
with the wall of the canal bisecting the picture
to provide a horizon line. Ader
appears in the frame from a side
street, gripping
his handlebars with
a bunch of flowers
clutched
in one hand before
appearing to
los
e
control of his
bicycle and plung
e
into
the water, along with the bike and flowers.
The
co
mposition
,
and
Ader’s
precisely timed
action
reveals
the
tension
between will and determinism,
literally
destabilising
the subject
in an attempt to
extend
the material limits of art.
Ader also found in
Mondrian
, as the venerated patron saint of Modernism
in the Netherlands,
fertile ground for
an
interrogat
ion of formal and compositional systems and strategies.
S
everal works in this exhibition reflect his
enquiry
into Mondrian’s theories, and
analysis
of
the
modernis
t project
. The film
Broken
fall (geometric)
,
Wekstkapelle, Holland
,
(
19
71
)
sees Bas Jan Ader standing next to a black sawhorse, on a brick path
lead
ing
to the
Westkapelle lighthouse
in Zeeland,
the subject of an early series of
Mondrian paintings.
Ader’s position aligns him
directl
y parallel to the lighthouse in the background. He momentarily staggers, then falls sideways against the
sawhorse and into the bushes.
The act rec
alls
slapstick but also
sees Ader literally embodying Mondrian’s black
line, the sawhorse a
reference
to Mondr
ian’s
fellow De Stijl member Theo van
D
oesburg
, who introduced the
diagonal into the neoplasticism debate.
The film reveals a particularly concise opposition between the forces of
nature and the logic of compositional control.
The film
Primary Time
,
(197
1)
begins with a vase holding a bouquet of primary colour red, yellow and blue
carnations. After a few seconds Ader appears dressed in black, (with his head never appearing in the frame) and
systematically begins to add and remove flowers until he has arra
nged an exclusively red, then yellow and finally
blue bouquet
, literally revealing his hand as an artist constructing and deconstructing the image. B
etween arranging
each he disappears briefly and the film ends with
a return
to the three coloured bouquet.
The series of twenty one photographs
Untitled
(Flower Work)
,
(1974
) utilises the same camera position as the film
but comprises three
series of
seven
f
r
a
med images, with the final image
an exclusively blue bouquet
.
In mixing
these man
made natural forms, (a Dutch national symbol) as a painter mixes paint,
Ader
challenges Mondrian’s
radical abstraction and suggests that it might never live up to the beauty of nature
.