PUSH HERE

With: Marieke Zwart (NL) and Dirk van Lieshout (NL). Curator: Esther Vossen.

In 2016, the artists Marieke Zwart and Dirk van Lieshout worked in the residency The Fifth Season. The exhibition PUSH HERE showed the results of Zwart and Van Lieshout’s collaboration with patients of the institution.

Dirk van Lieshout showed, amidst a room-filling installation, his film The Tea Bike. In the film we see the weekly bicycling expeditions that Van Lieshout made with patients across the institution grounds. Apart from that, there were drawings and scale models on show that Van Lieshout developed in The Fifth Season. During his residency in the summer of 2016 Van Lieshout did research on the traditional use of tea drinking and the social interaction that this involves.

Marieke Zwart showed three different works. Zwart asked patients to participate in balancing exercises in which the patient and the artist had to keep each other in balance. Without the support of each other, the work would literally fall apart. A series of five short films shows the communication between the artist and the patients. The interaction between the patients and the artist is at times hilarious, awkward and moving.

Another work was an installation consisting of five large sheets of paper hanging from steel frames. This paper was made using old paper from the institution, such as discarded medical files and old books.

Zwart’s third work was a series of new drawings named Push, Fall, Repeat.

During the exhibition our Summer School LOOKING FOR TROUBLE took place from the 31st of July through the 9th of August. Under the guidance of Marieke Zwart and Dirk van Lieshout fifteen Dutch art students followed a program focussed on broadening their knowledge and experimenting in a psychiatric context. The results of of the Summer School were on view during the opening hours of the exhibition.

The exhibition PUSH HERE was held from July 21st through August 20th 2017 in the exhibition space of Casco/FOTODOK in Utrecht.