locussolus
2016
From the archive: Sam Schoenbaum

From the archive: Sam Schoenbaum

09.02–08.03.2016
de Appel, Prins Hendrikkade 142, Amsterdam

From Februari 9th until March 8th, 2016, the Appel arts centre presents a videoregistration from the performance by Sam Schoenbaum that took place in the Appel in the late seventies.

In 1977 Sam Schoenbaum did the performance Engagement / Disengagement at de Appel asrt centre Sam Schoenbaum (AUS). Schoenbaum sees this today as a key work in his oeuvre. “I have a rich history with Amsterdam and it's art world beginning with de Appel on the Brouwersgracht, as it was with Wies Smals in the mid 70s...” His attention shifted in the eighties from video and performance to painting. He lived in New York, the losses incurred by the AIDS epidemic urged him to make works that made the temporary tangible.

We see the videoregistration of a performance wherein Schoenbaum directed three behavioral situations: a couple drinking tea, a dancer with headphones and an old gentleman who looks at the TV. Then the activities exchanged: the couple watched TV, the old man was dancing with headphones and the dancer drank a cup of tea. An obvious logic missing between the acts. While the audience watched, the artist read in the midst an exchange of correspondence between two homosexuals.

Schoenbaum appears to provide a cross-section of the human being and human behavior. He isolates a number of human behavioral aspects: passive (contemplating) and active (moving under its own music and interact with others), and personal (the music is different audible to anyone as the thoughts and ideas that drive one's life).

LocusSolus is a space for staging de Appel arts centre’s living past and lively present. Unravelling and dynamic, in black and white or full-colour HD, LocusSolus shows the fundaments of de Appel arts centre, her surroundings, the now and everything thereafter, to deepen and intensify her future.

LocusSolus is located in the souterrain of de Appel arts centre and open during opening hours of the exhibitions.