In 2014 Outset Netherlands supported the two photographic sculptures Off the Wall and Façade by Anouk Kruithof commissioned by the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. Both works were featured in the exhibition Paulien Oltheten & Anouk Kruithof at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam alongside other recent works of Kruithof and Paulien Oltheten.
Anouk Kruithof (1981) questions and explores the physical qualities of the medium photography. She strategically uses the camera to make contact with the outside world. The subject of her photographic sculptures, installations, take away pamphlets and artist-books are often public interventions. Kruithof’s part in the exhibition was called Within interpretations of a wall. She is particularly fascinated by the "wall", which functions both as an architectural element, and as a poetic delineation and metaphoric boundary within the human psyche.
Off the Wall (2014) is based on her stay at the artist-in-residency Het Vijfde Seizoen, where she photographed different coloured walls in a psychiatric institution. These photographs are presented as coloured bricks on the wall. In this new work, Kruithof asks where, precisely, is the borderline between 'healthy' and 'mentally ill'.
In Driving Hazy, Push-up (2013) and Façade (2014), Kruithof uses irony and shifting perspectives to shed light on the psycho-social state of contemporary New York. Using an unorthodox visual language, she depicts the pressure of work, the drive to perform, stress, anxiety, power dynamics, and the fine line between success and failure. For the installation Push-up, Kruithof asked business people to perform as many push-ups as they could at the entrance of large corporations. She continued until security guards told her to leave for liability reasons.
ON VIEW: 14th March - 8th June 2014
