Annotations (bronnen) is an exhibition of eight artists working in New York, Los Angeles and Glasgow. Each of the artists has a unique artistic practice, with rich and in-depth “back-stories.” While this level of information is often shared with viewers in a lecture or studio visit context, this exhibition translates these materials into an exhibition format, making visible the references, inspirations, and previous visualizations of the works on display. The studios of the participating artists will be brought to the audience by the artists each loaning copies of books, cds, visual materials, or other items that were crucial to the making of the work on display at Expodium. This process allows for art to be understood as an ongoing and slippery practice, less finite and linear than the one assumed by the standard exhibition format.

Fia Backström brings to Expodium an encore presentation of her recent project, HERD INSTINCT 360º. Earlier this winter, Backström had arranged a series of Sunday afternoon situations at Andrew Kreps Gallery in New York. Each focused around the problems of "community." Amidst a staged environment, which included food, drink, and seating, viewers listened to lectures given by Liam Gillick, Sylvere Lotringer, Arthur Jaffa, and others. For the installment at Expodium, Backström will install left-overs and ephemera from the original presentations; a set of "community posters," lecture images, and a curated selection of press releases from recent shows in New York. Backström will deliver her own HERD INSTINCT 360º lecture live, during the exhibition’s opening on April 14.

Daniel Bozhkov is represented by his recent collaboration with The Institute for Higher Listening. A moving platform for exchange of ideas, the Institute takes a different form whenever it changes location. The Institute began in Krakow, Poland as a bird-watching house on the roof of the Bunkier Sztuki Contemporary Art Center. There, Bozhkov collaborated with leading Polish ornithologist Dr. Kazimierz Walasz, in organizing the bird observations. While watching the birds living in the adjacent 300-year-old chestnut tree, Bozhkov and Professor Piotr Bozik, from the Art Academy in Krakow, created the Solar Wok. It is a vacuum-formed transparent lid that turns 1.5 liters of water into a lens, and the traditional Chinese wok into a solar cooking device. The Solar Wok and inspirations will be on view at Expodium.

Beth Campbell brings a new Space (In/Out) watercolor to Utrecht, continuing her investigation of the boundaries between thought and environment, and her unmooring of the various narratives hidden within the state of the everyday. The drawing charts the various psychological locations the mind may occupy, traversing from the humorous to the tragic to reveal the substance of anxiety. Campbell annotates her drawing with photographs from her childhood home and of trees, highlighting the impulses of a collector and the botanic inspirations that influence her branching and blooming drawings.

Ian Cooper & Jacob Dyrenforth collaborate on a large sculptural installation in I'm Too Old for this… (BOOM!) (2006). Inspired by the conventions of the Hollywood film genre of “Buddy-Pics," Cooper & Dyrenforth selected twenty films of this genre from a list compiled from memory, and inserted themselves into the lead roles. With minimal props and improvised costumes, the artists photographed themselves against a blue-screen in poses recreated from the movie posters. These often comedic photographs of the artists were used as templates for a series of cut-outs rendered in stark white foam board. The ghostly silhouettes of the cut-outs omit the details in the photographs, creating a blank screen onto which the viewers can project themselves. It is in this same way that Hollywood archetypes act as vessels for movie-lovers to pour themselves into and enact their own reflections and fantasies. Cooper & Dyrenforth will exhibit their collections of images they derived their poses from, both Hollywood’s and their own.

Shannon Ebner contributes a new photograph that marks the end of her five year Dead Democracy Letters series (2002-2006). Printed on newsprint, the image depicts a coffin-like repository for the physical cardboard letters once used for her Dead Democracy Letters photographs. Although the box was originally constructed for practical storage reasons, when it was installed in Ebner’s studio it began to take on new meaning. The letters lying dormant inside this box when its lid is closed suggests infinite potential, a veritable “Library of Babel.” Scrawled across the underside of the portable crate’s lid is Brassai’s phrase “Sculptures Involontaires,” a nod to Brassai’s surreal found-object photography and to Ebner’s preoccupation with the intersection between sculpture, architecture, and photography.

Ilana Halperin presents a trail of geological pilgrimage into the unknown, via a group of artworks on exhibit: a beautiful piece of stone called 'landscape jasper' resembles a photograph of Heilprin Land in Greenland; a series of drawings depict an underwater island which no longer exists; and a sound piece presents an Arctic skier talking of an imminent expedition to the North Pole, an expedition in which she goes missing. In an artist talk the day of the opening, Halperin will relate relevant geological anecdotes, which will include a eulogy for a vulcanologist, the story of a thirtieth-birthday celebration with an Icelandic volcano, and a chronicle of emergent landmass.

Seth Kelly’s sculpture, Birdman System, alludes to a kind of “Cosmo Creator” with two sets of nine small, golden deities. Composed of hybridized-bird figures, one deity group emerges from a black-hole lattice structure and the other set perches on a found chair. Kelly has also contributed an on-site charcoal wall-drawing titled Dead Multi-Verse. The drawing depicts an inverted moon with three competing axis mundi capped with figures from 1950s-60s science fiction and nineteenth century book covers. Kelly annotates his pieces with a slide show of selected paintings (1968-76) by his father J.D. Kelly.

A limited edition publication of the artists’ bibliographies will be available at Expodium.

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In Conversation: Notes from New York, Panel Discussion, Friday, April 14, 2-5 pm

In addition to the viewer’s interactive experience with each artist’s archive, this exhibition allows for further dialogue with the artists and their work via, In Conversation: Notes from New York, a panel discussion taking place prior to the opening reception on April 14, from 2-5pm. This will provide an informal forum for several of the participating artists to present tangential talks relating to their work. All are welcome to attend.

About Expodium

Expodium is an artist-run gallery in Utrecht, The Netherlands. Run by Maaike Gouwenberg and Bart Witte, it is an innovative contemporary art space which moves from one location to another within Utrecht on an annual basis. Expodium makes its provisional homes in commercial spaces never before designated as art galleries, maintaining a consistent atmosphere of intervention and improvisation. Expodium is located at Vredenburgpassage 80 en Bovenvredenburg 27, in Utrecht. For more information on the gallery, please visit www.expodium.nl.