Willem de Rooij: Whiteout

KW Institute for Contemporary Art - Berlin, Germany

Curated by Krist Gruijthuijsen

“I feel a pleasure of never contained sweep over me,

now that I know place is never”¹

- Laurie Sheck

By Lydia Magyar

Willem de Rooij’s “Whiteout,” curated by Krist Gruijthuijsen, draws focus to Ilulissat, a village in Greenland on Disko Bay. The exhibition presents works produced over two decades, either by de Rooij alone or with his longtime collaborator, Jeroen de Rijke (1970-2006), as de Rijke/de Rooij. Following their initial visit to Ilulissat in 1997, de Rooij returned in 2014 to continue its meditative representation. The body of work across time is a reminder of the nature we imagine. And there is beauty in imagining Ilulissat, here with untied senses, through clarified sound and visual work.

Who has seen an iceberg? The 16mm film I’m Coming Home in Forty Days depicts one as it was in Disko Bay, 1997. The film, by de Rijke/de Rooij, takes a viewer completely around an iceberg in 15 minutes. How long did it take for this ice to freeze? On camera, invulnerable, distant ice moves with waves swinging. The filmic process looks like one of a gentle, pictorial cartographer-but the iceberg is gone now, imagines de Rooij.

The film ends with a blue still of water in Disko Bay. Outside the screening room is Blue Table (2004), another joint work by de Rijke/de Rooij. In Blue Table, one blue image reprinted in several publications is featured in its imprecise manifestations, adding dimensionality to image production. All the variations of blue look real. Here the artists collapse representation into itself, their facility.

Willem de Rooij, Ilulissat, 2014, 12 channel digital audio recording, speakers. Courtesy Galerie Buchholz, Berlin/Cologne/New York; Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris; Regen Projects, Los Angeles; Friedrich Petzel, New York. Installation view KW Institute for Contemporary Art, 2017. Photo: Frank Sperling.

In 2014, de Rooij travelled back to Ilulissat to record its population of dogs, resulting in the sound installation Ilulissat (2014). The experience of “Whiteout” is scored by a faint howling of dogs as Ilulissat starts and stops in a separate room on schedule. Rarely are dogs so intensified. The swarm of howls blows like strong wind. De Rooij evokes an atmosphere created by animals. In a phone conversation, he said the sound “travels over the village. [...] If you’re standing, let’s say in the middle of the village, it will go over your head like a snowstorm.” The title “Whiteout” returns with new meaning.

The rhythm between screenings and sound also allows “Whiteout” to hold silence, darkness, blankness. One wonders what is between real experience and being in a space designed for this. What is “Whiteout”? De Rooij describes how, in a meteorological whiteout, “it becomes unclear where is the floor and where is the ceiling, or [...] where is the ground and where is the sky.” Even in a flurry, don’t forget this world.

Notes

1. Sheck, Laurie. Captivity. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007.

(September 14, 2017 - January 7, 2018)

Lydia Magyar is an artist and writer based in Berlin, Germany. She is currently researching the venues of performance art in her PhD research at the European Graduate School (Division of Philosophy, Art and Critical Thought).