‘MY PHAIR BABY” exhibition by Laura Andalou, the 23rd of May, at PHINTAGE by Helen Yard.

In her new solo exhibition Laura Andalou portrays 2 different women that each represent the characteristic women of PHINTAGE By Helen Yard and newborn PHINTAGE by Sharon, but the catch is, each in their opposite environments. What they have in common is their deliberated attitude towards life and their expressive appearance, described as ‘New Chic’.

EVENT:
Jewels by Cristel Ball
Drinks by Karakter Wijnimport
Music by Cristel Ball and Fritz The Face

More info: www.phintagebyhelenyard.com/

From 30th of June until the 22 September, EYE presents a major exhibition on Federico Fellini.

‘Fellini – The Exhibition’ unravels the filmmaker’s universe, taps into the sources of his fertile imagination and brings the vital power of his work into the limelight. 20 years after his death, large projected film fragments, photographs, archive documents and posters – from the EYE collection among others – provide insight into the obsessions and motivations of the man behind La strada, La dolce vita and 8½.

Federico Fellini (1920-1993), possibly the most famous filmmaker that Italy has ever produced, had a career that spans forty years. Those forty years yielded titles that have become forever ingrained in the memory of every film buff. The bellowing escape artist from La Strada (1954), the tormented high-society reporter from La dolce vita (1960), the tyrannical director with a whip from 8½ (1963) or the woman who lovingly clasps the young boy from the village between her large breasts: these figures have developed into archetypes of a universe that we have come to call ‘Fellinian’. A universe in which Fellini’s alter ego – played by Marcello Mastroianni on several occasions – turns up in ever changing guises and passes a parade of grotesque human weaknesses in revue.

Photo: Anita Ekberg and Marcello Mastroianni, La dolce vita, 1960 (Photo: Pierluigi, Christoph Schifferli Collection, Zürich, with thanks to the Fondation Pathé)

Play of appearances, a solo exhibition by Melanie Bosboom at C&H art space Amsterdam from the 18th of May until the 29th of June 2013.

In this photography series Melanie Bosboom plays with the viewer: she’s not a woman, she’s not a man and she uses dresses and clothes to camouflage herself. She takes the viewer into a playful world built by her fantasy where there isn’t a right or wrong. There is actually no image recognizable completely of the woman. Her characters are often covered with layers and layers of clothing, or hidden beneath coats, or in front of mirrors. Hiding and masking allows her to assume multiple identities in unusual circumstances and to play with ambiguities and contradictions. These two things fascinate her, especially the combination of them. What makes something male or female? How can an image provocative and challenging being at the same time vulnerable and fragile?

Melanie Bosboom, born in Zutphen but now residing in Brummen, graduated from Hogeschool vor the kunst in Utrecht. Since 1998 she has taken part in numerous group shows mainly in The Nederlands. She developed a highly personal style, creating photography work where she investigates contradictions and ambiguities. In addiction to her recent photographic work, she created installations in which characters can partake in role-play.

More info: http://ch-artspace.com/exhibitions/

Photo: ©Melanie Bosboom

Stephen Gill – Best Before End
Gill’s most recent series Best Before End was created with the aid of energy drinks which resulted in fantastical, abstract and vividly coloured works that through their intensity reflect contemporary, hectic urban life. First, he placed objects in the camera before taking the photographs, as he had done in the previous series. The negatives were later immersed in the energy drinks, which made the images shift their positions, disruptions to appear and softened the film emulsion. This made it possible to manipulate the emulsion – to stretch it, move it, tear it and to separate the various layers of the film, which were then reworked with a soft brush.

Until the 14th of July 2013

Monica Nouwens – Look At Me And Tell Me If You Have Known Me Before
In her project Look At Me And Tell Me If You Have Known Me Before, Dutch photographer Monica Nouwens captures the ambivalent appeal of one of the world’s greatest cities: Los Angeles. Nouwens depicts the lively DIY subculture of the city she lives in. Her personages truly belong in hip, young L.A. and live in the context of a city and culture facing a financial and moral crisis. Her work blends roughness, sensuality and emotional moments into a fragile but timeless image of beauty and the human condition.

Until the 14th of July 2013

Foam 3h: Lara Dhondt – Memento
In her work, Dhondt documents forgotten and found objects, materials and locations in the urban landscape. She does this in an effort to give marginal places a human dimension or dignity. Dhondt’s interventions seem casual and are often nearly invisible. If one looks very closely, however, the care and precision with which the interventions are constructed become clear.
The exhibition in Foam will feature black-and-white images from the Memento series, printed on rusted steel, cardboard and wood – materials that change over the course of time by reacting to their physical circumstances. Three-dimensional work from the Primary Stages series (2012), a map and Antropomorphe (2012), the 8-mm projection that she made in collaboration with Portuguese artist André Catalão, will also be shown.

Until the 17th of July 2013

More info: http://foam.org/

Photo:
Cover: best before end 2 ©Stephen Gill courtesy of the artist, ossian 2012 ©Monica Nouwens, from the series memento, 2013 03 ©Lara Dhondt
1 -Talking to ants 2 ©Stephen Gill courtesy of the artist
2 -Trenton 2012 ©Monica Nouwens
3 -From the series memento, 2013 04 ©Lara Dhondt

The story of Sixto Rodriguez is really quite unbelievable. The sixth child of a working-class family, he recorded the albums Cold Fact in 1970 and Coming from Reality in 1971. Although both albums were true diamonds neither sold well and, as a result, Rodriguez’s music career came prematurely to a halt.

In the years that followed Rodriguez stayed in Detroit, doing hard manual labor and always being close to a state of poverty. His music, however, was becoming increasingly popular in Australia and South Africa, where his fame was comparable to Elvis Presley and Bob Dylan. What is more, some of his songs would serve as antiApartheid anthems having a great influence upon several South African musicians.

All this remained completely unknown to him until 1998, when his rediscovery resulted in his first and very successful South African tour. The background of this incredible story became the subject of the acclaimed documentary Searching for Sugar Man, which did much to boost Rodriguez’s fame in both the US and abroad.

For those already familiar with his music and life story, watching Rodriguez perform live is a unique opportunity to celebrate his amazing comeback and pay tribute to one of the most underrated and largely neglected songwriters of the early 1970s.

The search for the Sugar Man may be over; his coming back to music reality though is a cold fact.

Rodriguez live in Amsterdam
Monday 1 July 2013 – Heineken Music Hall

Tickets: http://www.paradiso.nl/web/Agenda-Item/Rodriguez-Locatie-Heineken-MusicHall.htm

By: Mimis Chrysomallis

Transcreen Film Festival review by Grazia Ingravalle – One Zero One.

TranScreen, Amsterdam’s queerest film festival could have never lost the opportunity to screen such a queer movie as One Zero One – the story of Cybersissy & BayBjane. If Judith Butler’s concept, “queer,” means kind of weird, bizarre, abject and deranged, definitely “indefinable” and eventually escaping the boundaries of the “recognized” subject/object – then we can well apply this definition also to Tim Lienhard’s movie. In fact, One Zero One, premiered on Thursday night at Cinema het Ketelhuis stylistically is truly queer. Not only the two protagonists of the narration are so, but also the very way the film is conceived brakes the bounds of film genres. Tim Lienhard borrows TV and videoclips’ eclectic language and throws at us a documentary that at the same time is also a fairy tale and a video-arty phantasmagoria.

One Zero One tells the story of the “life changing” meeting at the legendary gay club Lulu in Berlin between Antoine Timmermans, aka Cybersissy, and Mourad Z., BayBjane. The former is a Dutch artist that in 1994 invented and designed his stage-persona Cybersissy, boosting the parties of the most popular clubs in Europe. The latter is the multi-disabled son of Maroccan migrants in Germany, who became a world-renowned party-performer, BayBjane, thanks to the encounter with Antoine.

Both of the artists have blurred the boundaries between art and life, melting them on the sensitive terrain of the body. Antoine was exploring the representation of bodily distortions, starting from the tenet that the word gay is still commonly taken for a mere synonym of anal sex. Only afterwards he found out that being a transvestite was a therapy for him, a way to cross his psychological instability and the embodiment of pop and visual art together. Mourad’s body is an art creation itself. His hands, his eye, his hips and his height uncannily appeal to us as only the oxymoron of beauty and horror can.

However, this is more of a (true) fairy tale. It is the picture of a real empowering life change, of a friendship and of trust. No one would have imagined such a glittery future for Mourad, hypocritically labelled as a disabled and therefore kept in a politically correct silence. So, why cannot disabled people have fun? Why cannot they hold the stage and proudly exhibit their bodies as it used to be till the time of vaudeville performances?

So why not being unique? There is a lot of room unoccupied! – This is Cybersissy’s provocatory invitation. Whoever wants to further elaborate on it, might want to start by watching One Zero One that will be screened again tonight at 17:00 at Cinema het Ketelhuis. See you there!

By Grazia Ingravalle
Photo: One Zero One movie – http://www.onezeroonemovie.com/

Hooded sweater: Religion • Pants: H&M • Shoes: Converse LTD • Necklace: Maison Martin Margiela

Ribcage sweater: H&M • Boots: Doctor Martens

Gillet: Phintage • Cap: State Of Mind • Pants: Silence + Noise

Tail suit: Phintage • Pants: Silence + Noise • T-shirt: Killstar • Boots: Doctor Martens

Photography: Attilio Brancaccio
Model: Jip S. Loots