About no below, no above, nosides

After more then a fifteen-year-long voluntary withdrawal from the structures of the art world, Gerrit Dekker presents his work in a one-person exhibition. Dekker's deliberate choice not to participate in the mechanisms of the art system was grounded in a sincere desire to distinguish art as a concentrated, intimate creative process from the mechanisms of power. This retreat, however, did not mean abandoning art: on the contrary. Although he no longer referred to himself as a visual artist, Dekker insistently kept engaging with aesthetic practice, exploring its various potentials in everyday life. The title of the exhibition refers to a metaphor Dekker uses when describing a loss of orientation (when there is "no below, no above, no sides") as a sign of his profound engagement in traveling, meeting people, or producing art. In this context, Dekker "collected" subtle gestures from his experiences: ephemeral situations, personal relationships with people, and remnants of "traveling and staying over" in the form of photographic images, mostly on slides. Stored in a tower built out of grey boxes (the slide-holders), together the images form an archive of non-intrusive, quotidian, strangely familiar moments.
hrsg. v. Jan Brand; mit Textbeiträgen von Jan Brand, Maria Hlavajova, Alex de Vries und Gerrit Dekker.