Barbara Seiler

WERK STATT WERK is the second solo exhibition of Belgium/Swiss artist Ante Timmermans at Barbara Seiler. It follows up his performative installation ‘Make a Molehill out of a Mountain (of work)’ at Manifesta 9 in the former coalmine complex Waterschei in Genk, Belgium. The idea that for 65 years, during which the mine was in operation, thousands of miners were fighting a daily battle against a mountain, resulting (visually) in a molehill of coal-waste, reminds of the work of Sisyphus and forms the basis of the installation. ‘Digging a hole to create (at the end) … A Mountain’, this absurdity is inseparably connected with the mining of coal.

The installation ‘Make a Molehill out of a Mountain (of work)’ is situated in the halls of the coalmine’s former administrative offices. The windows open the view on the Art Deco footbridge that led the miners into the mountain and on the molehills of coal-waste that mark the surrounding landscape. Timmermans transforms the hall back into an office: in the middle of the room, illuminated with neon lights, a table and chair, surrounded by shelves, on which stacks of white paper are waiting to be processed by the clerk. During the opening days of Manifesta the artist, in the role of the clerk, followed his monotonous work: taking a piece of paper, perforating the sheet, signing and stamping the sheet as evidence for its processing, filing the sheet in a folder on the other side of the hall, walking back to the desk, depositing the paper shreds from the perforation on a table in front of the window facing the coal-waste molehill, slowly building a small pile of confetti. A time clock controls the clerk’s work from nine to five o’clock. The Sisyphus work of miners is transferred to the administrative level and emphasizes the historical continuity. The installation draws on the absurd mechanisms of work and gives the system a poetic character. The seriousness of the work however never diminishes, mainly because the artist follows his task in this absurd setting with absolute sincerity. In the end, the work is not about creating a confetti-molehill nor is it an allegory to the piles resulting from coal mining. The work is about the perforation and punctuation of the paper. The Sisyphus-labor as a whole is what counts and what remains.

This interest in subtle irony and absurdity is a recurring theme in Timmermans’ art practice, which combines a conceptual art’s preoccupation with language and structure. WERK STATT WERK translates as ‘workplace/studio work’ but also means ‘work instead of work’. The gallery space will be transformed into a studio. The artist, this time in the role of the artist, will work in his studio. The exhibition space will show a working process instead of the work itself, again alluding to the process of work rather than the work itself.

Ante Timmermans (*1976 in Ninove, BE) lives in Zurich, CH and Gent, BE. His work was been the subject of exhibitions throughout Europe and includes SMAK in Gent (Belgium), Aargauer Kunsthaus (Switzerland), Kunsthal KAdE in Amersfoort (Netherlands) and Vrijstaat O. – Freestate, Ostende (Belgium). He is participating in Manifesta 9 in Genk (Belgium), which will be on view until September 30, 2012. Later this year he will have solo exhibitions at Musée Jenisch in Vevey (Switzerland) and at Kunstmuseum St. Gallen (Switzerland), which will be accompanied by a publication with jrp (Ringier Publishing). This summer he will represent Belgium at the 13th Architecture Biennale Venice (Italy) together with the interdisciplinary team AWJGGRAUaDVVTAT.