Stichting NDSM-werf presenteert: Daniele Frazier op NDSM
Stichting NDSM-werf presents 6 meter high ‘skydancers’ by the American artist Daniele Frazier at NDSM from 19 May to 23 June.
Photo credits: Daniele Frazier
The skydancer, a figure moving through the wind, is same medium that is mainly used as an advertisement by car dealers, shopping centers or furniture boulevards. More recently, the skydancers have appeared in memes. Online, with their ecstatic movements, they function as a blank canvas on which various emotions can be stacked via text.
Daniele Frazier made a new installation of 9 sky dancers especially for NDSM. Under the title ‘A Vital Mess’, the artist works with the same cheerfully colored inflatable advertising objects. But she denies the commercial message by putting confusing and contradictory messages on the self-designed figures. Positive and negative words like ETERNITY and NOTHING or ALL THE WAY and GONE TOO FAR alternate, creating loaded messages. Depending on where you stand, or how the wind behaves, you see certain words that may or may not associate with each other. Another example is PLEASURE, THRILLS and RAPTURE with AGONY, PAIN and TORTURE on the back.
Daniele Frazier also presents her earlier work ‘It Takes Two’, skytubes in the shape of a hammer and nail that continuously ‘miss’ the nail on the head. The artist previously showed this work in the Socrates Sculpture Park in New York. You can see this work as a direct reflection on all the construction troubles surrounding NDSM, but it also refers to the crafts that are now carried out by many makers on NDSM and it also makes a reference to the shipyard industry, the history of the site.
With the cultural programming, Stichting NDSM-werf poses the question of what public space means, who and what is seen and discussed in the public space, and how it can remain a public and cultural space that is not exclusive and that is embraced by everyone. Daniele Frazier uses her wry humor in an apparently unambiguous and mostly commercially used medium such as the sky dancers. Daniele Frazier’s work always deals with the politics inherent in all art displayed outside the museum walls. The 9 skydancers can be seen from May 19 to June 25 outside at NDSM (at the ferry landing) from Wednesday to Sunday: 12.00 – 18.00.
Daniele Frazier (USA, woont en werkt in Brooklyn, NY), meer info via onderstaande knop.