In 2015 Outset Netherlands proudly supported Lara Almarcegui’s exhibition in the De Ateliers DEBUT SERIES at the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag. As part of a three-year project, the museum offered artists who have served a residency at De Ateliers – the leading institute for young artistic talent in the Netherlands – the opportunity to present their first ever solo exhibition in a Dutch museum. Lara Almarcegui (b. Zaragoza, Spain, 1972) was the third artist to be featured in the series.
Lara Almarcegui employs procedures similar to those of an archaeologist, but applies them to buildings and sites that still exist. The basis of her work is the idea that the materials of which a building is made will be all that remains when it is demolished. Almarcegui herself puts it like this: "The list of materials recalls the building before it was constructed, when the materials were loaded on the truck for delivery, and it resembles the pile of material it will turn into after it has been disassembled. The list is like a cookbook that shows a dish alongside the list of ingredients. Here you can see the building with its various components."
Almarcegui documents her investigations in many different ways: in the form of ‘listings’ (lists of the type and weight of materials used in the buildings concerned), videos, and physical representations of the materials involved. At the Venice Biennale in 2013, for example, she filled the Spanish Pavilion with the exact quantities of raw materials used to construct the exhibition space.
For her show at the Gemeentemuseum, Almarcegui has worked in close cooperation with the museum to carry out a specific investigation into the bricks used by the museum’s architect, H.P. Berlage, to construct his last great masterpiece in the 1930s. The results of the investigation were encapsulated in the ‘listing’ that was on display in the projects gallery from 29 August.
In addition, the artist exhibited Buried House, Dallas (2013), a video showing a house being demolished and the rubble being buried in a large hole on the same site: a way of suggesting that all the materials that make up the buildings important to us – from private homes to churches – will eventually end up in the ground, covered over with new structures of significance to subsequent generations and cultures.
ON VIEW: 29th August - 15th November 2015
The Gemeentemuseum Den Haag has long enjoyed a close relationship with the post-graduate educational institute of contemporary art De Ateliers in Amsterdam. This collaboration with the premier Dutch institute fostering young artistic talent lasted three years with the exhibition series De Atelier Debut Series. Starting in 2013, the museum offered a graduate from De Ateliers a first solo exhibition at the ‘projektenzaal’. Outset Netherlands is proud to have been a partner of De Ateliers Debut Series and to support this unique new initiative, in collaboration with the Niemeijer Fund.
De Ateliers is an independent artists’ institute. Its prestige is such that it attracts artists from all over the world to work in its 23 spacious individual studios, accommodated in a historic building in the centre of Amsterdam. De Ateliers has produced many top artists, including Urs Fischer, Joep van Lieshout, Aernout Mik and Matthew Monahan.
