LIDWIEN VAN DE VEN
opening Saturday 14 June
exhibition from 16 March to 14 September 2003
Rue

Lidwien van de Ven has been working with photography since 1985. In 1995 she started to work on a regular basis with film. She examines cultural determinants of different regimes of representation in the world. She is particularly interested in the laws that govern figuration in politics and religion, domains that to her are the most essential to understanding humanity. She travels the globe with her cameras to investigate questions surrounding the notion of representation and what is photographable, what is visible, what is knowable, if what is shown is the same thing as what is seen.
While one might be tempted to place Van de Ven’s work in the realm of documentary and photoreportage, she insists that the artistic circuit allows her the time to produce and present the images she captures as she wants – which differentiates her work radically from the fast-moving world of the press.

The medium of photography permits Van de Ven to produce her works in many formats and editions. For several of them, as is the case for the five works chosen here at MAGASIN, she has used (approximately) the standard format of publicity billboards that are 4 x 3 meters, and thus she plays with one of the most coded and widespread forms of representation in public space. Likewise, the placement of Van de Ven’s pictures in any given exhibition space is important to her; the visual and textual relations created between them must be taken into account. Significantly, here she has chosen to show five pictures (dated 2001) taken in Europe at the turn of the millennium; five different images of the contemporary world at our doorstep.

Marche Blanche (2001) 300 x 390 cm
OTAN/BXL., 19 avril 1999 (2001) 386 x 300 cm
Sans titre (2001) 245 x 356 cm
Eclipse de lune (2001) 280 x 332 cm
Reichstag (2001) 300 x 425 cm

Marche Blanche (White March) and OTAN / BXL 10 avril 1999 (NATO / BXL 10 April 1999) both designate precise situations in recent current events. One shows the “white march”, a massive demonstration against pedophilia in Belgium, the other shows the satellite media vans in front of NATO’s headquarters during the war in Kosovo: on the one hand the fabrication of information by professionals, and on the other, the collective mode of public expression by anonymous citizens. At the same time, these images acquire a metonymical function, and are thus capable of (re)presenting a possible synthesis of a certain world order according to the world of communication.

In Sans titre (Untitled), a young man sleeps on the ground in a very ambiguous setting, Eclipse de lune (Lunar Eclipse) explores the subject of beauty through absence, both of light and of things, Reichstag shows the capitol building of Germany, recently restored both physically and symbolically to the reunited German people. All of these works encourage multiple readings which are possible with Van de Ven’s open-ended strategy of picture-taking.

BIOGRAPHY
Lidwien van de Ven was born in 1963 in Hulst, Netherlands. She lives and works in Rotterdam.