Vous Etes Ici

23 april tot 21 mei

VOUS ETES ICI EDITIONS 1990 - 2005, April 23 until May 21 2005
With o.a. Tim Ayres, Robert Barry, Frank Van den Broeck, Fortuyn/O'Brien, Ab van Hanegem, Anton Henning, Paul Morrison, Verner Panton, Jan van der Ploeg, Andrei Roiter, Han Schuil, Rosemarie Trockel, Alan Uglow, Peer Veneman, Lawrence Weiner

VOUS ETES ICI is celebrating its 15th anniversary with an exhibition of editions that have been published by us since 1990. On the occasion of the first five-year anniversary the Museum Van Bommel Van Dam in Venlo organised the exhibition Genummerd + Gesigneerd I (Numbered + Signed I) on the editions. In 2000 the opening of the gallery VOUS ETES ICI on the Lijnbaansgracht in Amsterdam celebrated the 10th anniversary.

Fifteen years we, Francis Boeske and Hans Gieles, have been working with several artists of national and international stature on special editions or multiples. Editions with a built in difficulty, a handicap if you like, or rather - an extra challenge. How to tickle the artists and seduce them to research their inventiveness in new technical fields? As a publisher and commissioner, how to decide the parameters of an assignment by which the artist has all the freedom but is also encouraged to experiment and conquer new grounds? It's a collective adventure, resulting in a series of extraordinary and limited editions, of which we take pride and pleasure in showing you a wide selection. A festive occasion to mark the fifteenth jubilee of VOUS ETES ICI!

It is always exciting to approach and invite an artist. We love the work, that is the starting point. We give him or her all the freedom. But at the same time we determine a specific technique with its inherent limitations. We do realize we put a load onto the shoulders of the artists. But it is great to experience over and over again that they always come up with creative solutions. The techniques applied are for instance silk-screen print, fired enamel on steel, silk-screen on mirror or invisible ink on paper.

Alan Uglow opened our series of large scale silk-screens with 12 Standards/Leaning (1994). These 12 works are based upon a reproduction of a painting of his, leaning against the wall. The silk-screen technique allows for it to give a certain part of the image a different colour, which makes for an exciting interaction of the twelve colours with the two different printed kinds of white.

The Silkscreams (1996-2000) are a continuation of these large scale silk-screens, a series in which among others Ab van Hanegem, Anton Henning, Paul Morrison, Jan van der Ploeg, Rosemarie Trockel and Peer Veneman made work of 120 x 160 cm. Also, as a rare exception, furniture designer Verner Panton took up our invitation to create a two-dimensional work.

To invite artists for an edition in close collaboration with the Langcat company, specialized in decoration-enamel, turned out to be a great success. Although enamel has nearly disapeared from our daily surroundings in the last forty years, this technique seemed to possess specific contemporary qualities for artists. The LANGCAT series (1992 - 1995) shows the rich variety of possibilities of this medium within each signature of the specific artists (a.o. Fortuyn/O'Brien, Rombouts & Droste, Gerard Polhuis, Andrei Roiter, Alexander Schabracq).

The Mirrors (2000) have the condensed mirror after taking a shower as a starting point. In Tim Ayres' It has poured forth the silk-screened condens on the mirror seems to have been partly wiped off, under which the text from the title appears.

Also a number of painters were invited to actually make a sculpture edition. This, in the presumption that painters sometimes experiment in their studio with other kinds of material and more or less already work three dimensional. Han Schuil made a painted bronze for this series, that can either be hung on the wall or lay on the floor (Nineteenninetynine, 1992). The three tilted symbols Schuil used frequently in his work during the year 1991 have a astonishing spatial quality.

For The BLIND FAITH Series.?..! (1992-1995) a number of artists were invited to make a design, that was then reproduced by offset print in invisible ink. The printed image could be made visible by scratching over it with a (colour)pencil or by rubbing graphite- or pigmentpowder over it. Again, this made for many different approaches. Karin Sander decided to let the picture be invisible (Scribble, 1994), whereas Lawrence Weiner emphasizes his invisible text As time goes by / Als tijd verstrijkt (1993) by letting it reappear in a rhythmical pencilhatching.

Besides the publishing of editions, we represent the following artists in our gallery:
Tim Ayres, Robert Barry, Reto Boller, Charles Boetschi, Bart Domburg, Driessens & Verstappen, Joachim Grommek, Ab van Hanegem, Oliver Held, Lieven Hendriks, Anton Henning, Scarlett Hooft Graafland, Jos van Merendonk, Heike Mutter & Ulrich Genth, Bettina Pousttchi, Anne Jaap de Rapper, Sam Samore, Martijn Schuppers, Daniela Steinfeld, Stefan Thiel, Julia Warr.

The most recent edition of VOUS ETES ICI is by Tim Ayres, I'm getting much better (2005), in an edition of 115, for the anniversary price of € 75,00. It can be seen as a pendant to his (sold out) I'm not nice edition from 1997 in collaboration with our honoured colleague Markus Richter, Potsdamm, Berlin.

2005