Tlön Projects

Taken Apart & Put Back Together Again

31.01.2024—21.04.2024

Francis Alÿs, Katinka Bock, Pauline Boudry & Renate Lorenz, Giorgio Andreotta Calò, Angela Detanico & Rafael Lain, Julien Discrit, Mounir Fatmi, Aurélien Froment, Mario García Torres, Douglas Gordon, Shilpa Gupta, Claire Harvey, David Horvitz, Kosmas Nikolaou, Wilfredo Prieto, Jimmy Robert, Oscar Santillán, Vittorio Santoro, Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Lawrence Weiner

Curated by: Nathalie Zonnenberg

Venue: A Tale of A Tub, Space for contemporary art and culture
Justus van Effenstraat 44, Rotterdam, the Netherlands

Opening Times: Thursday to Sunday 13:00–18:00

Timetable during Art Rotterdam:
31.01.2024
Opening Times: 13:00—18:00

01.02.2024
Opening Times: 10:00—20:00

01.02.2024
Opening Reception: 16:00—20:00

02.2024—04.02.2024.
Opening Times: 10:00—18:00

Jimmy Robert, Paramètres, 2011, video still

The exhibition Taken Apart & Put Back Together Again marks the fourth edition of an annual collaboration between Tlön Projects and A Tale of A Tub and presents a variety of artworks selected from Tlön Projects’ imaginary collection. The title of the exhibition, curated by guest curator Nathalie Zonnenberg, is derived from a statement by the American artist Lawrence Weiner (1942-2021). As the motto of the exhibition, it refers to the existence of conceptual artworks in collections, which often disintegrate after their initial presentation and need to be rebuilt to be seen again.

The exhibition brings together sets of artworks which (originally) formed a whole, like twins separated after birth being brought back together after some time. These twin works or ‘doubles’ are parts of the same work or closely related works by the same artist, or sometimes they are works by different artists that share conceptual meaning or topics. The works come from different collections, revealing corresponding choices in their composition and reversing the circle of production, distribution and collection.

The exhibition is structured as a journey of discovery in which visitors can link the twin works together, similar to the Memory game, yet slightly different. It represents several principles of the history of a comprehensive, ‘encyclopaedic’ collection. It can be understood as a microcosm of the macrocosm, in which there are various references to the world in which we live, our actions in it, but also far beyond it, by reading the position of the sun, moon and stars. Routes of kinship are explored between concealment and publicity, reality and myth, day and night, Orient and Occident, and North and South.

Tlön Projects’ imaginary collection is formed by the convergence of selected artworks from various international private art collections and constitutes the starting point for its programme, which is created in collaboration with various partner institutions. In this way, Tlön Projects generates access to artworks which otherwise would have been largely shielded from public access.

The works comprising Taken Apart & Put Back Together Again originate from the following collections: Lorraine Janet Dean & Nigel Bagley Collection (the Netherlands), Kervahut-Laurent Fiévet Collection (France), Frédéric de Goldschmidt Collection (Belgium), Fondazione In Between Art Film (Italy), Joseph Kouli Collection (France), Lab’Bel Collection (France), Edgard F. Grima Collection, (France) ), Kerenidis Pepe Collection (France), Terry Rocvès Collection (France), Servais Family Collection (Belgium), Veys- Verhaevert Collection (Belgium), together with other collections that wish to remain anonymous.

Nathalie Zonnenberg is an art historian and curator based in Amsterdam. She is currently assistant professor at the Faculty of Cultural Sciences of the Open University in Heerlen. In 2016 she obtained a PhD in Art History from the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam with the dissertation Conceptual Art in a Curatorial Perspective: Between Dematerialization and Documentation. As a curator she worked, among others, for Kunstintituut Melly in Rotterdam, the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo, and the public art program Beyond Leidscherijn in Utrecht.
She curated exhibitions such as Size Matters: In relation to Minimalism (Kunstfort Vijfhuizen, 2014), Redone. Conceptual Art from the Collection (Kröller-Müller Museum Otterlo, 2008), and L'enfer c'est les autres (Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam, 2007).