“What art does — maybe what it does most completely — is tell us, make us feel that what we think we know, we don’t. There are whole worlds around us that we’ve never glimpsed.” Greil Marcus — Wednesday November 20th — —

The idea is to die young as late as possible. — Ashley Montagu — Wednesday November 20th — —

I love listening. It is one of the only spaces where you can be still and moved at the same time. — Nayyirah Waheed — Wednesday November 20th — —

Nature Rewired

On the 16th of November the exhibition Nature Rewired has opened at Museum Het Valkhof in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. The exhibition showcases the fascinating creations of Dutch artist Christiaan Zwanikken. The installations of the artist, who lives and works in Portugal and the Netherlands, are hybrids of skulls and bones from nature and robotics from the hands of the artist, which are computer-controlled mechanism creating the moving dynamic within the works. Through his creations Zwanikken shares his vision on the future of man and nature, which is both confrontational and compelling.

The continuous process of evolution is a major theme in the work of Christiaan Zwanikken, in which he questions the position of mankind when it comes to their responsibility in the process of creation. By combining technology with elements from nature the artist tries to give insight into the consciousness of human and animal behavior and more specific; movement of animals and the earth itself. In all, the work of Zwanikken can be seen as a metaphor emphasizing the evolution of humanity. The past two years the artist had several exhibitions in England, Canada and the United States. In Museum Het Valkhof his work was featured for the first time in the exhibition Alles onder controle (2001).

Nature Rewired also marks the Dutch premiere of the film Convento. In this documentary, New York-based filmmaker Jarred Alterman focusses on the process the artist and his family undergo while transforming  a 400-year-old monastery into a home, workshop, and nature preserve in the historical city Mertola where Zwanikken part-time lives and works.

Museum Het Valkhof is opened Tuesday to Sunday from 11:00 until 17:00, the exhibition runs until the 30th of March 2014.