Best Of Graduates

by Rosa Kieft

Before the start of summer art lovers get spoiled with the graduation shows of all the art academies. Nothing better than wandering around in an academy building exploring the newest of the newest. Gallery Ron Mandos shopped around and invited artists from every Dutch art academy to show in his gallery. Good for who missed the graduation shows and wants to see a tiny bit of the new generation. 

Sofia Montenegro made a portrait of this generation with 'Conversations of the Last Decade'. She made a list in alphabetical order with all words that have been added to the Oxford dictionary the last decade. For example: 'leaderless resistance', 'queer nation' and 'talibanization'. The words are dictated while the video shows images with every word. The images look like they are copy-pasted from google and work connotative. Automatically the result is that the words tell the story of 2000 till now. 

Niels van Bunningen

Historically interesting as well is the work by Niels van Bunningen. Three big heads who seem to be in a transformation in becoming zombies stare into the space with golden eyes and golden teeth. They each wear a different costume, one has a tie, one has a working cloth and one wears a nazi uniform. Niels van Bunningen explains that they are metaphors for three ideologies that failed in the last century: capitalism, communism and fascism. These figures of history, made by great craftsmanship, are staring miserably into the gallery.

Ola Lanko, '100 gram of rice'

Ola Lanko pictured a 100 gram of rice. Literally. Every grain of the total 4560 is photographed, placed on a dark green shiny background and funny enough every different rice grain has its own sculptural quality. The pictures put together on a wall look like kitchen tiles. The detailed documentation has a pixel-like feeling but overview is impossible and actually unnecessary. 

Ramon Schoonbrood

Identity crisis seems a decease for the twenty-agers of nowadays. Ramon Schoonbrood made a very striking floor piece about feeling worthless. Superman is drawn with wires that lay loose on the ground. He's pointing to the words "My worthless life". Walking around the work changes the perspective on the image and disfigures it. Is Ramon saying there is not only one way of looking at your life and that if you take a different point of view everything looks loose and yet to be shaped? 

The artists selected by Ron Mandos seem all very conscious about history, society and the visual language. Are they the best of graduates? Who is to tell. Being in the context of each other doesn't take it further than any other graduation show. But, they are probably the ones to watch.

Gallery Ron Mandos

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