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SCHWARZWALD: RAISING HELL IN SOUTH HOLLAND

Metal Heart III

Primal energy is radiating in the Noordkaap project at the aptly named building, the “Energiehuis” (Energy House). Recently the exhibition Schwarzwald (Metal Heart III)  exploded with axes, metal rage, and fire, as hundreds of metal fans and the art establishment converged in the city of Dordrecht in south Holland. This exhibition is presented by the art space Noordkaap in Dordrecht, located just a quick 10-minute ride from downtown Rotterdam by fast train, and a 5-minute bus ride from the Dordrecht Central Station.

Artist and curator Arno Coenen teamed up with the new contemporary arts space Noordkaap, run by Katja Diallo and Jan Kryszon, to take Coenen’s Metal Heart Project to a whole other level.

Arno Coenen presented a black forest installation that is as complex as his own HD videos layers, or intense Eurotrash beer brewing alchemy. The artists participating in the project donned the guise of a Death Metal band in an exhibition that rides the edge of looking at power, sexuality, dark energy, and meditations on life and death.  All of this is displayed and performed to the tune of extreme music and the mythical imagery surrounding the idea of the Schwarzwald (the Black Forest in south western  Germany).  The opening night mixed Wagnerian opera with tunes of Mayhem and axe pounding fury, bringing in a dark shining night of the new and unexpected. The 300-plus opening-night crowd was made up of  various metal fans, alongside museum and gallery elite. The motley crew of artists includes Abner Preis (USA), Alexander Krone (Denmark), CHAOMETRIC (NL), Arno Coenen (NL), Dragan Striskovic (Croatia), Gwen Stok (NL), Hans van Bentem (NL), IRIS (NL), Martyn F. Overweel (NL), Luuk Bode (NL), Marinus de Ruiter (NL), Martin C. de Waal (NL) and Michael Markwick (USA/NL).

The entire project plays with all genres and subgenres that exist in metal. But it reaches beyond stereotypes of the various cultures (such as the purely pop trashy side) of the metal movements.  As Arno Coenen says, it’s a huge world of all kinds of bands and perspectives but he was inspired also by black metal tied to the pagan back-to-nature movement. This idea could not help but remind me of a scene in Andrei Tarkovsky’s film “Andrei Rublev” where the traveling Icon Painter encounters a “dark night of the soul” caught up in a black forest, stumbling on a spring pagan ritual. Like in Tarkovsky’s film, a startling whole new world is revealed to the newcomer.

The project also takes into account the serious anxiety felt by many of the different original bands and their discomfort with the mainstream. Large sculptures and drawings tap the power and aesthetic extremes of the energy of the music as well as the imagery so often utilized. The show also connects to the original content of death metal which seems to tie the true practitioners and fans to their own feelings of mortality. The complexity of all the genres of metal culture are there below the surface in the show. All the dark imagery, lyrics and music can be seen through metaphorical lenses which is often overlooked by people searching for the usual gallery experience.

Given its interactive recordings, performances and installation work, the show its a multi-sensory experience.  Later a collectors-group vinyl LP will be released, complete with printed matter and music from the artists in the project. In true touring form, as with any band ripping up the airwaves, the project will be hitting the road throughout the EU and possibly other locations.

At Noordkaap we step into a black wood and contemplate not only the culture of metal, but the dark night of the soul.  “Death”, as Abner Preis stated in his tours at the opening, is displayed in a multi-layered, multi-faceted way. The group has constructed a massive memento mori of sorts that is on limited viewing and hitting the road soon. Chuck Schuldiner might be raising his horns in appreciation….the “scavenger of human sorrow” rises like a flock of ravens above the landscape. It will be interesting to see how the project grows as it travels since the possibilities are endless… Noordkap is a new player on the cultural front of the Netherlands in South Holland.

More information on Noordkaap’s website. Photos below.

SCHWARZWALD: RAISING HELL IN SOUTH HOLLAND on KCLOG

NRC Next:

Reportage over Schwarzwald op TV Rijnmond Nieuws maandag 1 maart (vanaf 13′30):

Click here to view the embedded video.

uit: Zone 5300, nr. 88 (winter 2009/2010):

http://www.zone5300.nl

Subbacultcha, Maart 2010:
http://issuu.com/subbacultcha/docs/subbacultcha-march2010

Dordt Nu:
http://www.deweekkrant.nl/artikel/2010/maart/01/menselijke_oerdriften_

Strange Messenger:
http://strangemessenger.web-log.nl/strangemessenger/2010/02/exhibition-schw.html

blogger over opening:
http://www.mobypicture.com/user/cor1ander/view/6072289

TORCH gallery twittert:
http://twitter.com/TORCHGallery/status/9673548845

KidGoesting

Exhibition

 

Artists

 

Opening/ Closing Night

 

Gwen Stok aka Gwenst (1983) is a young artist from Holland who after graduating in animation decided to loose the pegbar and trade it for a brush and some paint. Now she is making paintings taking inspiration from expressionism, comics and animations, often with a dark and grim edge, but always with a wink and a innocent blush on her face… or actually on her slightly deformed female subjects.  She is also working as an illustrator. Right now she is creating new material for the Schwarzwald expo.

Luuk Bode (1972) maakt schilderijen, tekeningen, sculpturen, typografie, strips en illustraties.

Bode studeerde in 1994 af als illustrator aan de Willem de Kooning Academie in Rotterdam.

Zijn werk is o.a. geïnspireerd door moderne popcultuur, als strips, metalhoezen, westerse en niet-westerse religieuze kunst en het stedelijke landschap.

Bode exposeerde in onder meer in de Vishal in Haarlem, de Kunsthal in Rotterdam, Mama Showroom, La Luz de Jesus Gallery in Los Angeles en op de Biënnale van Dakar. In Dordt was zijn werk eerder te zien in Pictura en tijdens de eerste Tussenstop in het Dordrechts Museum.

Luuk Bode’s installatie voor Schwarzwald is mede mogelijk gemaakt dankzij Black Widow

Martina Prins

Martina Prins was born in the Netherlands and studied voice at the Dutch National Opera Academy in The Hague with Alexander Oliver, Maria Acda-Maas and Diane Forlano. Martina undertook master classes with Ks Brigitte Fassbaender (see review), Harry Peeters, Tina Ruta, Anthony Legge, Graham Clarke, Rita Cullis and Prof. Dennis M Heath. In 2003 Martina was the recipient of a stipend from the Threes Orri Fonds for foreign students from the Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds and in the same year she received the renowned Stipend from the Bayreuth Festival.

A major part of Martina’s repertoire are works by Richard Wagner. She performed both Wesendoncklieder and Walküre-sister Gerhilde in several concert occasions and enjoyed great personal success for her performance of Sieglinde in a semi-staged version of the 1st Act of Die Walküre conducted by Kenneth Montgomery. In June 2007 Martina extended her Wagner Repertoire with her first performance of ‚Isolde’s Liebestod’ at the Rotterdam Operadagen (see review).

Her first roles were performed within the Dutch National Opera Academy and included Donna Anna in Don Giovanni conducted by Kenneth Montgomery, and Lady Billows in Albert Herring under the baton of Paul McCreesh. Subsequently, Martina was engaged to sing Marcelline in Le nozze di Figaro at IT’s Festival Amsterdam under the direction of Robert Carson, and the title role in a staged version of Ravel’s Shéhérazade. Martina has also been active in Contemporary music and has sung roles such as Moglie dell’ Orco in Henze’s Pollicino for the Nationale Reisopera in 2002 and Zuidenwind in Bart Visman’s De Roep van de Kinkhoorn in 2003 in the Concertgebouw Amsterdam, subsequently released on CD.

More recently Martina has added to her repertoire the Verdi Requiem (see review), First Lady – Die Zauberflöte in an international tour of theatres in the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany and Mutter and Knusperhexe in a new production of Hänsel und Gretel in Rosenheim, directed by Philipp Harnoncourt. He subsequently invited her to Vienna, this time for the Baroque Opera ‘Alcione’ by Marin Marais, where she performed (according to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung): ‘an exceptional and skillful Ismène and Pretrèsse’, conducted by Lorenz Duftschmid with his ensemble Armonico Tributo Austria.

In November 2008 Martina Prins made her debut as Judith in Bluebeard’s Castle by Bela Bartók, in a semi-scenic production by De Doelen, Rotterdam with the North Netherlands Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Michel Tabachnik. This production received much praise, being both described as ‘sublime’ and ‘semi-scenic being a huge understatement’.

This summer Martina appeared in the Concertgebouw of Amsterdam, performing the soprano solo in Mahler’s 2nd Symphony, which was received with equal praise, describing her and altosoloist Helena Rasker as the stars of the evening. April 2010 she will sing her first roles in Russian, appearing in the rarely performed opera “Fiery Angel” by Sergei Prokofiev.

Chaometric