Gallery Diary - Exile | Kinke Kooi & Tenant of Culture

Die aktuelle Situation bedeutet eine enorme Belastung für die Kultur- und Kreativwirtschaft und auch für uns als Kunstmagazin. In dieser Zeit wollen wir unseren Beitrag leisten und geben Ihnen täglich Einblicke in die Ausstellungen der Galerien.

Coloring Quarantine is an open call and open access project in response to the closure of EXILE’s physical gallery space on March 13 due to COVID-19. Coloring Quarantine has the simple aim to collect and share drawings from a wide range of contributors. Drawings are accessible via an open-access dropbox folder from where they can be downloaded and easily printed out on any standard printer to color in while in ockdown.

The exhibition Fittings combines the works of the Dutch artists Kinke Kooi, born 1961, and Hendrickje Schimmel, born 1990, who operates under the synonyme Tenant of Culture. Fittings is part of an ongoing series of exhibitions combining artists of different generations and backgrounds.

Kinke Kooi abstracts internal, organ-like physicalities into elaborate dream-like, pastel-colored drawings. Fleshy organs together with pearls, plants, fruits and cotton buds are contrasted with sharp knives, rulers and square shapes. The inherent symbolism can be interpreted through gender definition as entangled in an organic, fleshy web of almost paradisian but subversive non-binary utopia. The works reference historical anatomic drawing as well as religious iconography but result in an intestinal physiological and psychological landscape of an organ‘s inner bowel movement. Kinke Kooi‘s work abstracts and subverts the internalised sphere of body and gender identity. Her work exposes a magic, yet vulnerable inside based equally on symbiosis and conflict.

Kinke Kooi <> Tenant of Culture: Fittings, 2020. Installation view, © EXILE

Tenant of Culture applies millennial post-gender trajectories based on community and inclusion into three-dimensional hybrid artefacts. The artist upcycles used materials, mainly old clothing, into new sculptural works that disrupt the definition of garment as well as of sculpture. The works become hybrids, that function in the ephemeral in-between of fashionable fluctuation and sculptural monumentality. Her practice is further expanded through community workshops encouraging participants to re/upcycle rather than to simply consume clothing. Tenant of Culture creates new shields, partially protecting partially disguising the internal identity of the inside.

Fittings is in many ways a very special exhibition.

Fittings is in many ways a very special exhibition. While Kinke Kooi‘s work exposes and reveals the insides, Tenant of Culture creates a protective outside to an undefined inside. Fleshy vulnerability and post-fashionista sculpturality result in an undefinable hybridian de-gendered dissection of inside anatomies and outside shields. On top of the artistic dialogue the two artists are related to another on a family level as mother and daughter. Therefore it is not an exclusive curatorial vision that circumscribes the exhibition as more their personal dynamic and engagement with one another on a family as well as professional level.

Tenant of Culture: Country Styles for the Young, 2020. Recycled garments, cement, eyelets, laces, bucket handle. 30,5 x 42 x 42 cm © by the artist

With this being the first collaborative project by the artists, both will create individual pieces that communicate with one another. While each artist is able to select works by the other, there will be new productions that are specifically made for the exhibition and set a new intimate dialogue between their artistic and personal relationships.