Kunsthuis SYB

Julia Geerlings and Niekolaas Johannes Lekkerkerk are curating the Second Triennial of Beetsterzwaag

International cross-fertilisation between philosophy, theory and the visual arts: the new Centre for Philosophy and the Visual Arts in London brings together artists and philosophers. When it comes to art education, London has an excellent reputation. Goldsmiths, Slade School of Art, the Royal College, the Royal Academy, Wimbledon, Chelsea, Central Saint Martins: each renowned institutes […]

A man sits next to a sculpture. He’s playing the cello. It’s Saturday afternoon and visitors of the exhibition The City as Canvas uncomfortably form a circle around the man and the sculpture. A female dancer appears from the stairwell. She links the visitors together one by one, placing hesitant hands on strange shoulders. The […]

Alison Yip works primarily through painting, wall treatments and everyday materials, engaging various genres and styles of visual representation. She examines notions of containment and absorption as it is negotiated pictorially and as a subject matter in itself as a process that takes place cognitively, but also within such ‘containers’ as a painting or architecture. […]

Kunsthuis SYB is participating in Playtime, the eleventh Kunstvlaai festival this year with new work (a performative interaction) by Milena Naef, winner of the 7th Sybren Hellinga Kunstprijs 2016. Playtime From May 20 through 22 over twenty project spaces from the Netherlands and abroad will experiment with an elastic exhibition concept at the SSBA Salon, […]

In the spring of 2016, artist Jason Hendrik Hansma (1988, Lahore, Pakistan) resided at Kunsthuis SYB in Beetsterzwaag. In his presentation in the local village church, two animals took center stage: a white peacock and a black swan. Interested in the white animal that is commonly known for its profusion of beautiful colors; and the […]

On Sunday the 19th of February, Müge Yilmaz (1985, Istanbul) leads us, a group mostly consisting of Frisians and Randstad residents, to the woods of Beetsterzwaag. It’s dark and muddy. The month-and-a-half of Yilmaz’s residency has come to an end. She has mainly used this period to delve into the performance we are soon to […]

During the first weeks of her residency in Beetsterzwaag, Müge Yilmaz worked on a series of propositions. In the second part, she gathered a team of performers in ghillie-suits and arranged them in the woods of Beetsterzwaag as a tableau vivant. Using different configurations, the group played with positions, interactions and readings of Yilmaz’s propositions as though it were a manifesto. The reactions, feelings and opinions of the performers were largely decisive for the development of the creative process, and ultimately the result which will be presented in Kunsthuis SYB on the 19th of February.

Gabber Nation 2.0: The Rotterdam Edition Kunsthuis SYB at Art Rotterdam Intersections 2017, 8th – 12th February in the Van Nellefabriek. Artists: Henrike Naumann, Boris Postma, Merle Vorwald, Bastian Hagedorn, Johannes Büttner, Tea Palmelund, Ekaterina Burlyga. Curator: Agnes Winter. Last summer, Kunsthuis SYB shook the foundations of quiet, peaceful Beetsterzwaag with a stomping presentation of […]

“The Concrete : The Mountain” A ghillie suit is a type of camouflage suit that is covered with a lush, shredded coat. It is designed to enable the wearer to fully blend into his environment during a hunt or in a war situation. The best ghillies are handmade using natural materials: leaves, twigs and moss […]

Welcome to the final presentation of The Inevitable Others by Feiko Beckers on Saturday, December 17th, up from 16:00 o’clock!

Centre for Philosophy and Visual Art & Kunsthuis SYB joint residency open call.

De mislukkingen, het ongeluk en de gênante situaties die ontstaan in de interactie met de ander, staan centraal in het werk van Feiko Beckers. In zijn video’s en performances probeert hij grip te krijgen op situaties uit zijn eigen persoonlijke leven.

http://www.sybrenhellingakunstprijs.frl

The five contestants for the Sybren Hellinga Art Prize 2016 have been selected! The jury, consisting of Bianca Stigter, Jaring Dürst Britt en Riet Wijnen, nominated the following artists: Halla Einarsdottir (1991, IS), Milena Naef (1990, DE), Eric Peter (1989, NL), Machteld Rullens (1988, NL) and Sanne Vaassen (1991, NL).

On Saturday 24 September at 17:00h, as an extension of Helen Dowling’s final presentation of her residential period at Kunsthuis SYB there will be a screening of three The One Minutes Series: -we do the voodoo, initiated by Helen Dowling –Communication with the non-human, curated by Melanie Bonajo –Making Hybrids, curated by Janis Rafa Helen […]

A school of tropical fish. Shooting nervously past each other, guided by the sound of a crackling fire. Then three cheerful twenty-somethings snorkeling in a bright pink ocean. In between a shot of the water’s surface taken from the cool depths, behind it the blazing sun, to a soundtrack of sharp shrieking cicadas. Helen Dowling’s The Burning […]

On Saturday 2 July 2016, a unique local product – Wild Treasure (Beastige Skat) – was unveiled at Kunsthuis SYB in Beetsterzwaag (Friesland, The Netherlands). Wild Treasure is a little silver case shaped like a Frisian forest bean, inscribed with a message and enswathed in a soft moleskin pouch. It was conceived and created in […]

GABBER NATION Opening Exhibition 23 july 2016 3pm – open end Exhibition 24 july – 27 july 2016 Henrike Naumann The collective project GABBER NATION focuses on gabber culture in Friesland and on the specifics of sub-culture in the rural area. While the Heipalen sound inspired the industrial gabber bass drum of Rotterdam, the village […]

Before you, on the ground, lies a thing. Before me, on the ground, lies the same thing. We see, feel and think differently when we look at this thing, but we are in agreement that it’s there: in and for itself. In the interaction with that thing that lies before our feet, we discover something […]

 

Tot en met 15 maart toont Museum Bevédère een selectie van de schilderijen die de toonaangevende Deense kunstenaar John Kørner maakte tijdens zijn artist in residenceverblijf in Kunsthuis SYB. Kørner (1967) woont en werkt te Kopenhagen en exposeert internationaal.

We touch objects on a daily basis: cups, cutlery, plates, a mouse to control our computer, bottles of shampoo and soap, tools, chairs, couches, tables. We touch these objects because their functions invite us to. We drink coffee from the same cups everyday, sit at the same table, and everyday we open and close the […]

There is no haggling over the price of an artwork at the art fair. What you do see is hands that shake each other enthusiastically, hands that pat people on the back and hands that casually rest on a shoulder during a kiss. And every now and then you might spot a firm handshake that […]

“I recently received the news that Mr John Ravenswood, who lived on the island of Quelpart, had passed away,” writes J.J. Slauerhoff in the preface of Ravenswood’s collection of poems East Asia. The author, Slauerhoff continues, deserted a whaling ship and ended up on an island in the Strait of Korea. Afraid people would discover […]

  In the parallel, digital universe of the internet, there is a subculture of people who deep down identify themselves not as human, but as an animal or mystical being. They carry the soul, for example, of a wolf, a fox, a cat, a fairy, a vampire, an angel or a demon. They mostly meet […]

John Kørner and I are looking at one of his paintings. Floating above a vast horizon we see a man walking; he carries a bundled-up body over his shoulder. Next we look at a seascape with an enlarged sneaker floating on the surface. They are allusions to the refugee crisis. On the next canvas we […]

At the end of the summer, Kunsthuis SYB presents the first edition of a festival for visual art that will take place every three years: the Triennial of Beetsterzwaag. For four days at ten historical locations, you can see art, live performances, participate in activities, listen to lectures and music, meet artists, walk, and sample […]

The end of July is in sight as the tour madness slowly reaches its peak. Like flies the sponsors, doping control, cycling press and podium girls circle around the sweaty cyclists. In close pursuit are the spectators. Sport unites. But the extensive professionalisation, commercialisation en globalisation of big events, like the Tour de France, almost […]

Visual artists Noa Giniger and musician Anat Spiegel (aka. Noon & Ain) create poems from cutouts of their own Gmail chats and WhatsApp correspondence; functional communication turns into pure poetry. In their texts, video works and audio recordings the duo explores different feminine and existential topics through a personal, friendship- based dialogue. Noon & Ain originated in Kunsthuis […]

CROSS SECTION OF A LANDSCAPE #2 – Yeb Wiersma & Miek Zwamborn Dressed in shorts we lift our legs, clay sticking to our feet, from the soles up to the calves. I cannot hear anyone talking, the wind on the mudflats has free rein and sweeps into all ears. Never before have I seen such […]

WALK II: No Solid Ground.. Am I the walker, the path and the landscape combined? Infected by their fascination for walking Miek Zwamborn (author and poet) and Yeb Wiersma (visual artist) roam along the coastal salt marshes of Ferwert, Friesland. Along their way the guides will make various interventions by displaying and reading from their […]

Old Man [the sun] showed them the roots and the berries, and showed how to gather these, and certain times of the year they should peel the bark of some trees and eat it… (Grinell, G.B. 1913. Blackfeet Indian stories. C. Scribner’s Sons, New York.)  For centuries, the inner bark of pine trees was an […]

4th May 2015, a sunny spring day. The Netherlands commemorates the Second World War, and in Kunsthuis SYB Pieter Paul Pothoven presents the budding start to the ‘lengthy writing project’ – he refrains from calling it a novel – that he’s been working on these last few weeks. Bathing in the last rays of sunshine […]

Kunsthuis SYB will be represented at the independent art fair SUPERMARKET in Stockholm. Supermarket is an international artist-run art fair for artist-run galleries and other artists’ initiatives. The goal of SUPERMARKET, is to provide a showcase for artists’ initiatives from all over the world and to create opportunities for new networks in the Swedish as […]

Think of the resistance in the Second World War. How many of the images that now spring to mind come from a Dutch film or from an exhibition you once saw in one of the 25 national war and resistance museums? An entire generation has grown up with images of the war and the resistance that have been […]

Opening: Friday the 13th of March, 20:00h. Exhibition: 14-22 March 13:00-17:00h. During the Kuhntradictions project, a co-operation with Academie Minerva, Groningen. Kunsthuis SYB will function as a laboratory for thought experiments and strategies on how abstract conceptual material can be a point of departure for the production of art works. Imagine you place a cat […]

SYB has a new graphic designer. We would like to introduce him: Maarten van Maanen (Leiden, 1975) lives and works in Amsterdam. He received his BA in Audiovisual Design at the Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam (1999) and studied type design and typography at the Royal Institute of Art in The Hague (2001-2002). Maarten […]

You might also be interested in the interview by Angela Serino The curators and the artists showed an overview of the research process that they developed during their stay at the residency. Apparent were traces of individual reflections as well as of the collaborative work with the guests and the audience, next to diagrams on […]

In this attempt to analyze what it is that we mean when we talk of artistic production and its relation to the condition of being in a residency, the new ‘temporary’ collective looked back at the previous use of SYB house as a candy factory and used this information as a starting point of their investigation.

We started 2015 with a partly renewed Programming Committee. The old committee recently saw three seats vacated: Maritt Kuipers to our delight became SYB’s new artistic director in October and Arjen de Leeuw and Angela Serino left SYB in December. Starting 2015, current members Noor Nuyten and Timmy van Zoelen will be joined by the […]

Saturday 20th December at 3 pm the final presentation of the six weeks long residency project When spectators work, workers observe – The beginning is the last part to be created will take place at Kunsthuis SYB. The curators and the artists will show an overview of the research process developed through the setting up of […]

IN COLLABORATION WITH MARCEL DICKHAGE AND CATHLEEN SCHUSTER FINAL PRESENTATION: DECEMBER 20th   The cinema museum in Lyon is housed in the Lumière brothers’ old film factory; DIA: Beacon in New York resides in a building where biscuit tin labels used to be printed; WIELS is situated in a former brewery in Brussels; and Kunsthuis […]

What happens when you bring together two artists who deal with the interface between art and life? During their residency, Rumiko Hagiware and Mounira al Solh investigated the contemporary meaning of laziness. They studied texts on this subject, searched for ways to be lazy, and spoke with many people about the subject. They filmed the […]

FINAL PRESENTATION: Saturday 8 November, 2 to 5 PM A presentation of all the materials collected so far, text, images and film footage. With foods and drinks and some tools to be in a lazy state all together. “Six days you shall labour, and do all your work.” That’s how it’s written in the ten […]

Each plant has its own sound. A leaf tears apart and rustles between your fingers: the soft cracking of its veins, alternated by the laceration of its fleshy cellulose, produces a characteristic, almost pleasant sound. The mutilation of plants comes natural to us. It is part of a process of construction through destruction that lies […]

A jungle is a tropical wilderness according to the Van Dale’s Great Dictionary of the Dutch Language. However, a jungle can also refer to a complex entity of rules and connections dominated by the law of the fittest, as in an ‘urban jungle’. There is no word for jungle in Frisian; a tropical wilderness in […]

Jelena Andjelovski and Paula Müller met in December 2013 in Zagreb. The two artists were invited to interact in the frame of a workshop for Pogon Jedinstvo, together with other artists from Serbia, Croatia and Germany. They discovered their shared interest for the message that lies between language and image and decided to work together. […]

Three Man High is the outcome of the summer residency by Søren Thilo Funder and Tina Helen at Kunsthuis SYB. A project not only visually very strong, but also in which the role of the ‘artist in residence’ and the relation between art and science are researched in an intelligent and critical manner. Imagine you’re […]

In Beetsterzwaag, young and old made their way to the streets on King’s Day to watch the village parade, an annual highlight. The village was taken over by people in chicken suits, hippies and witches, masterchefs and Tom Thumb who at the end of the tour fell out of the boots that were far too […]

Many people in Amsterdam sing on their bikes. In Beetsterzwaag too, the difference being that the song of a cyclist in Beetsterzwaag is brought about by a blissful feeling of simplicity, significance and regularity. A rare form of happiness that can be found in traversing one and the same pattern day in day out. In […]

Beetsterzwaag, 3 February 2014 – From 10 February, Domenico Mangano will spend six weeks in Kunsthuis SYB. With a group of clients from De Wissel, he will make a children’s book and a video about De Wissel. Mangano will go out with clients almost daily and the clients will actively participate in the process of […]

Upon entering Kunsthuis SYB you immediately find yourself eye-to-eye with a monumental wall featuring big black letters spelling ‘Arrivals’. The clean-cut white wall would be reminiscent of a museum ticket desk, were it not for a lady behind a tiny reception expressly requesting you to fill in an ‘arrivals form’. Sitting on one of the […]

‘How do I deal with the artistic process, for instance with in between moments where nothing is fixed and there’s room for interaction and dialogue?’ It’s one of the questions concerning Daniela Apice during her stay in Beetsterzwaag. In 2009, Apice began showing work by young artists in the stairwell of the artists’ initiative space, […]

“How do I keep a gallery: 20 helpful tips for the contemporary practice” Alas: a manual like this isn’t available in the bookshop. Running a gallery is something you learn on the shop floor where scraping together to cover overheads quickly becomes at the expensive of the open, experimental attitude you initially had in mind. […]

According to farmer Geert Geerligs a cow is a “four-hoofed animal with udders under it”. Geert is convinced that a cow can be recognised from a significant distance. Something Tom Kok put to the test. In SYB he presents, among other things, a framed photograph of a field in which there are two white flags with […]

A scientific experiment is generally understood as a test of a certain hypothesis, informed by a desire for definitive answers to articulated questions. But to establish proof, a scientist hardly ever relies on a single experiment. As a rule, he does not deal with isolated tests in relation to a theory, but rather with a […]

What actually is knowledge and how does it come to be? The work of Tom Kok (NL, 1987) arises out of a discourse concerning these epistemological questions. They are questions that have occupied scientists and philosophers from the very outset. The result is a collection of theories: theories that have changed the face of science […]

It’s like an experiment: one artist, one week, one specific place. What happens if an artist who usually works on long-term projects has but one week to create? From the 30th of October until the 5th of November artists from the postgraduate program HISK in Ghent (ww.hisk.edu) will move their studio’s for seven days to […]

Vertaling uit het Engels: Hermien Lankhorst The pineal gland or ‘third eye’ is a small endocrine gland hidden deep within our brain. Anatomically it appears as the only section of our brain that is not half of an(other) entity. Looking at this curious compact nodule, Descartes thought that the pineal gland held the key to our […]

Invitation Join Sober & Lonely at Kunsthuis SYB on Saturday the 29th of June, anytime between 10am and 10pm. There will be real life and long-distance interactions and interventions with other artist-run spaces from near, far, and farther, covering a variety of subjects including asteroids, breakfast, critical pedagogy and dolphins. There will also be presentations […]

SLICA hosted the first series of 24 Hour Suburban Residencies in the summer of 2011 in Johannesburg, with projects including tree climbing, fiery horizons, shrimp cocktails & Frank Sinatra, a curatorial seminar, fridge recordings and other summery interventions. In the summer of 2012, the 24 Hour Suburban Residencies were held in the garden and outside […]

At eight o’clock in the morning Beetsterzwaag is in a state of frenzy: it’s Queen’s Day and that means the annual parade takes place in the village. This year it starts at quarter to nine, so that everyone can be in front of the TV in time to watch the live abdication of Beatrix and […]

What was taking place at Hoofdstraat 70 (70 High Street) before Kunsthuis SYB came into existence and before Sybren Hellinga and his idealistic gallery moved into the little house in Beetsterzwaag? When Kamila Szejnoch encountered Kunsthuis SYB, this must have been the first questions she asked herself; to the Polish artist, it is second nature […]

This text was written after exchanging our thoughts and texts and those of others through e-mail correspondence and Skype. I wasn’t present at Marnie’s public presentation on 16 March 2013, but with this text I hope to contribute to making my engagement with her research public. I can imagine Marnie in the house in Beetsterzwaag, […]

The work of Marnie Slater is saturated in language and often focuses specifically on the spoken word. Pondering retreats, she wonders whether language might be contained in silence. After all, keeping silent urges the whole body to ‘speak.’ This silent body possesses a multitude of expressions that cannot be described as ‘without’ language, such as […]

The artistic process starts in the morning as the curtains open. Throughout the day, during a cup of coffee, during each conversation and during a trip to the shops; the process is present. The process knows no beginning and no end, only when the artist sleeps is there a moment of rest, although even then […]

You are at the umpteenth opening and from experience, you know how the evening will go. Familiar scenes unfold before your eyes. Just when you have snuggled up in your comfortable role, two wineglasses fall at the exact same moment. That is odd. Then you see how a photographer takes a picture of a photographer […]

translation: Jenny Wilson  The revealing capacity of art almost seems to have become a thing of the past. With the rise of Wikileaks, Twitter and Facebook, art has as good as lost its urgency in being a subversive medium. Now that everyone’s able to radically express themselves through social media, the notion of the rebellious […]

Artists’ residencies are places for isolation and concentration, where – by breaking from a daily routine – new insights can be found. An interruption from the daily routine can also be achieved without isolating oneself. In collaboration with others, you can discover ingrained behavioural patterns and thus reach a better understanding and more freedom of […]

Symposium Artistic Research in Daily Life translation: Jenny Wilson To have one´s cake and eat it too is most often used negatively, to connote the idea of consuming a thing whilst managing to preserve it. This may also indicate having or wanting more than one can handle or deserve, or trying to have two incompatible […]

Participating artists: Naomi Cheung San, Pieter de Kok, Szilvia Mondel, Rosalie Ravensteijn, Paula Salas, Weronika Zielinska, Heiðar Kári Rannversson, Maritt Serena Kuipers and the Zolder Museum (Iva Supic Jankovic, Aimee Zito Lema, Kristina Benjocki and Isfrid Angard Siljehaug). Artistic research is trendy, but its exact meaning is often unclear. For example, what does Beetsterzwaag do with […]

translation: Jenny Wilson It is no coincidence. One hundred years after Sir Robert Falcon Scott’s famous English ‘Terra Nova’ Expedition, with the aim of being the first to reach the Antarctic, two Dutch artists set out on a voyage of discovery. From Kunsthuis SYB in Beetsterzwaag to the geographical centre of the Wadden Sea; the […]

translation: Jenny Wilson Sometimes the everyday is instantaneously far from normal. The banal transcends its unappealing quality and normal things reveal themselves as material for something extraordinary. The presentation of the working period of David Stamp (UK) and Grégory Cuquel (FR) at Kunsthuis SYB is full of references to the everyday and often also to […]

translation: Jenny Wilson “When I describe a landscape, you envisage a landscape as a painter would prepare his canvas.” This thought, one of the many that the visual artist Ruth Verraes (BE, 1980) closely adhered to during her six week stay at SYB, runs as a connecting thread through her research project, Sketch of a […]

The way in which we shape our environment appears to be determined by our assumption that language and reality coincide. For example, when I describe a landscape, you will get an image of a landscape. But the latter never coincides with my description of the landscape, nor with the landscape as it appears to me […]

translation: Jenny Wilson The Now is. The Now cannot have passed or is still to come. It exists in favour of continuous replacement. We cannot remember nor imagine the Now. The only thing we can do is to alter the condition of the Now beforehand. The experience of the Now can be manipulated through intentional […]

Why do artists choose to do a residency? In what way does the structure of a residency differ from other existing supporting structures for artists, such as the gallery, the project space, the academy or the studio? How can a residency contribute to the development of the artists today? In the coming six weeks, these […]

translation: Jenny Wilson The house has become a set. The stage for a play where the spectator, as well as the artist himself Matthew Lutz-Kinoy (1984), look on with slight amazement. Whoever walks into SYB during Lutz-Kinoy’s stay will encounter a house full of (half) naked men. Erotic photographs, delicate drawings, intimate paintings and baroque […]

translation: Pieter de Bruyn Kops It is a white, winter scene: the bread in Kunsthuis SYB is made of gold. The Italian artist Francesca Grilli has invited us for a remarkable lunch. As small gifts, golden bread buns have been placed between glasses of water on a long table. Subtle, and with an amount of […]

translation: Pieter de Bruyn Kops With a shock the jammed front door of SYB springs open, a mad laughter echoes through the darkened space. The voice turns out to be that of a woman with an apple green face, the leader of the Apocalyptic Community that currently live in the building. The beginning of 2012 […]

translation: Pieter de Bruyn Kops “The U-turn, the turning of a vehicle in a U-shaped course so as to face in the opposite direction.” Kunsthuis SYB is my U-turn. After a 3 hour trip from Amsterdam to Beesterzwaag, it is there where I slow down to assess my surroundings and successfully complete the turn. It forms […]

translation: Pieter de Bruyn Kops A memory of 10 years SYB There is a virtual line between Beetsterzwaag and Amsterdam. In East-Amsterdam it turns into an old train track that then abruptly comes to an end. The connection is made, the destination seemingly reached. There, a small, deserted stationhouse stands, where Kunsthuis SYB’s ´forward-looking retrospective´ […]

The project ‘Nocation: Hello to the People’ has been a co-operation with the Piet Zwart Institute, Master of Fine Art Program, Willem de Kooning Academy, Rotterdam. For six weeks Kunsthuis SYB has functioned as a laboratory for education and active reflection. The location and the area often function as preconditions for artists to develop and […]

translation: Pieter de Bruyn Kops ‘De Stille Revolutie’ (The Silent Revolution) by Rory Pilgrim (Great Britain, 1988) begins in Beetsterzwaag. In the windows of Kunsthuis SYB posters hang with slogans carrying an evangelical under tone. One poster reads – “My House is Your House, Come Inside, You’re Welcome”. Passersby are provoked to come inside and […]

translation: Pieter de Bruyn Kops ‘The landscape painter uses the figures of men to mark a road. He would not make that use of my figure. I walk out into a nature such as the old prophets and poets Menu, Moses, Homer, Chaucer, walked in.’ – Henry David Thoreau, Walking (1862). ‘Walking’ is Thoreau’s glorification […]

translation: Pieter de Bruyn Kops “Exaggerated friendship Adventure How men tell it Heroin Survive, energy, swap Tested to its very limits Fill your volume with air Further” The weblog of the Israeli, Noa Giniger (1977), is filled with a seemingly random selection of words, pictures, film clips and videos. Only the titles of the material […]

  Usually, Erica van Loon works in her studio on artificial landscapes in set-like constructions. She alternates building, painting and photographing, using wooden constructions and transparent plastic, whether painted or not. The alienating new landscape that comes into existence in this way is often shown by Van Loon as pictures in light boxes. Recently, Van […]

The American performance- and video artist Nina Yuen will enter the new decade in Beetsterzwaag through a thorough analysis of the morning ritual. First, Yuen observes the morning habits of friends and strangers in great detail, such as waking, brushing teeth, stretching and breakfast. Then she attempts to reenact these actions in her own decors, […]

The Polish artist Mariusz Tarkawian always carries pen and paper. He notes down life around him in an endless stream of intricate little sketches called Peeped Drawings.  During conversations with friends and appointments with gallery owners he sketches away relentlessly, also recording fragments of dialogues. His report in drawing, reads as a succession of awkward […]