CURATING

 

 

Upcoming

 

Boekie Woekie Amsterdam (working title)

EXHIBITION & PUBLIC PROGRAM

Organized by: Center for Book Arts New York

29 May - 13 September 2025 

Jan Voss, Boekie Woekie Logo, [2000]
Jan Voss, Boekie Woekie Logo, [2000]

Boekie Woekie is an artists'-run bookshop and gallery in Amsterdam that was founded in 1986 by a group of six artist. Soon Henriëtte van Egten (Dutch), Rúna Thorkelsdóttir (Icelandic) and Jan Voss (German) remained from this group and shaped this enterprise for artists' publications that conventional bookshops find difficult to promote and sell. Alongside their own artistic careers, the three dedicate their work to this collective sculpture in progress as they call it. At its heart is what art is all about: a free, poetic and anarchic spirit and a sense of a keen, sensitive humour. For almost 40 years now, these attitudes in conjunction with a wealth of experience and knowledge have nourished the risky and fascinating undertaking with its generous and welcoming atmosphere of exchange between people of all backgrounds, artists, experts or passers-by. To make that possible, everything is managed in self-responsibility, from the financial side and the bureaucratic administration, to the website and the sales in the shop, online, at fairs, and even in temporary branches abroad. 

The exihibition focusses on the Boekie Woekie’s activities and the many threads it weaves around the world since its beginning. Without losing sight of its unclassifiable nature, it aims to illustrate the challenges and potentials of its two main principles: firstly, its uncompromising independence which is based on complete self-financing, and secondly, its commitment to self-published and small press titles by artists, regardless of their fame. These factors make the bookshop gallery unique, probably worldwide. They open up breathing holes within the late capitalist art world for life to return to art and vice versa, as Jan Voss, one of three Boekie Woekiers puts it.

 


 

 

"marco 15" und HIVE/Section Film: Gustave F.echt

AUSSTELLUNG, SEMINAR UND FILMDREH VON UND MIT RAINER OLDENDORF

Organized by: Kunstverein Weil am Rhein

20 March - 01 May 2022

Rainer Oldendorf, Balkon, Tumringer Straße, Spätsommer 2020. Photo Hans Ginz
Rainer Oldendorf, Balkon, Tumringer Straße, Spätsommer 2020. Photo Hans Ginz
About...

 

 

 

DISONATA. ART IN SOUND UP TO 1980 

Organized by: Museo Reina Sofia Madrid

22 September - 1 March 2021 

Karel Appel in Phonogram Studio during de project Musique barbare (detail), 1963. Photo Ed van der Elsken
Karel Appel in Phonogram Studio during de project Musique barbare (detail), 1963. Photo Ed van der Elsken
About...

EXHIBITION CATALOGUE IN SPANISH AND ENGLISH

 

# DISONATA. ARTE EN SONDO HASTA 1980

# DISONATA. ART IN SOUND UP TO 1980

 

254 pages, with contributions by Javier Ariza, Ricardo Dal Farra, Arndt Niebisch, Christina De Simone and by Maike Aden. 

 

Online access: 


KONTAKT WITH GUY SCHRAENEN. ARTISTS' BOOKS, SOUND, FILM AND MORE
21 February - 5 June 2020 (extended until 11 September 2020)

Organised by: Museo Reina Sofía Madrid

Exhibition Kontakt with Guy Schraenen, curated by Maike Aden
Guy Schraenen, Je est un autre, 1987. Private Collection Antwerp

Guy Schraenen (1941–2018) was a gallery owner, publisher, collector, curator, investigator, author. He is probably best known as one of the key figures of a transboundary network of pioneering artists and activists who, from the end of the 1950s on, explored radical new  languages and ways of producing, multiplying, and disseminating artistic ideas and works. Long before established art institutions, critics, and art historians recognized the artistic value of artists' publications, Guy Schraenen treasured, published, exchanged, collected, and presented them to give “the opportunity to a public, kept ignorant by specialized media, to have knowledge”

The exhibition seeks to illustrate Guy Schraenen's various projects, approaches, and connections, starting with his activities as founder of the Galerie Kontakt. It displays works and documents of his publishing house Guy Schraenen éditeur, and of the Archive for Small Press & Communication, whist he ran with Anne Marsily. It also reflects his exhibitions, festivals, screenings, concerts, essays and radio programs as well as his projects as founder and curator of artists’ publication collections in several European museums. Altogether, it witnesses Schraenen’s deep concern to take an independent stance toward the canons of the established art system and to explore new territories. 

  

 

 


 

 

GAME, SET, MATCH.  THREE CONCEPTS OF THE ARTISTS' BOOK

Organized by: Museum Serralves, Porto, Portugal

28 June - 06 December 2019  

GAME, SET, MATCH, Museum Serralves 2019, Curator Maike Aden
Sol LeWitt: Lignes en quatre directions et toutes leurs combinaisons, Bordeaux, Capc Musée d’art contemporain, 1983, detail
About...

 

 

VINYL & CLIPS. SOUND COLLECTION GUY SCHRAENEN AND VIDEO CLIPS BY ARTISTS
Organized by the Frac Franche-Comté, Besançon, France

Curated together with Sylvie Zavatta

19 May 2019 - 22 September 2019

VINYL & CLIPS. SOUND COLLECTION GUY SCHRAENEN AND CLIPS BY ARTISTS,
Cover by Roy Lichtenstein (detail): I Cry for You, Bobby 'O, 1983
About...

Reviews (selection): Le Monde /// Les Inrockuptibles ///  Trax Magazine


ASSISTANCE

Research Assistance

ULISES CARRIÓN. DEAR READER. DON'T READ / QUERIDO LECTOR. NO LEA

 

Organised by: Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía Madrid

March 15 - October 10, 2016

 

Iteration: Fundación Jumex Arte Contemporáneo Mexico City

February 09 - April 30, 2017

The Museo Reina Sofía presents the retrospective Dear Reader. Don't read, dedicated to the Mexican creator Ulises Carrión (1941, San Andrés Tuxtla, Veracruz, Mexico - 1989 Amsterdam, The Netherlands). Carrión was an artist, editor, writer, exhibition curator and theorist of the international avant-garde art scene after the 1960s, as well as a key figure in Mexican conceptual art.

The exhibition aims to illustrate all aspects of his artistic and intellectual work: from his initial career as a successful young writer in Mexico, and his university years as a graduate student in France, Germany and England during which he studied language and linguistics; to his numerous activities developed in Amsterdam, the city in which Carrión settled definitively in 1972, and in which he lived until his death at the age of 49...

 

EXHIBITION CATALOGUE IN SPANISH AND ENGLISH

 

# DEAR READER. DON'T READ.

# QUERIDO LECTOR. NO LEA.

 

Edited by Guy Schraenen, 272 pages, with contributions by Guy Schraenen, Felipe Ehrenberg, João Fernandes, Heriberto Yépez, Javier Maderuelo, Maike Aden

 

Online access of the English edition: Dear reader. Don't read.

 

 


 

 

Exhibition, Catalogue and Programme Assistance

VINYL. RECORDS AND COVERS BY ARTISTS

Exhibition organized by: Museum Weserburg Bremen / Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA)

21 Aug.-27 Nov. 2005

 

Sven-Åke Johansson – Plattenspieler, from the instrumentarium by Johansson and Kapielski
Sven-Åke Johansson – Plattenspieler, from the instrumentarium by Johansson and Kapielski
About...

EXHIBITION CATALOGUE

 

GUY SCHRAENEN: VINYL. RECORDS AND COVERS BY ARTISTS. A SURVEY.

 

272 pages with glossary and discography of covers, documents, music, readings, sound art verbs vocal, a comprehensive bibliography and an index.

 

Online access: Vinyl. Records and Covers by Artists