Johan van der Keuken
Up to the light. Filmmaker and photographer

Exhibition: 30 March to 9 June 2013

The exhibition’s line of approach is the extraordinary way in which Van der Keuken brought together contrasting images in his films and observed a world in constant transition. Always on his travels but also close to home, Van der Keuken intercut his observations in Africa, Asia or Latin America with similar or indeed diametrically opposed situations. The exhibition also shows that Van der Keuken was one of the first filmmakers to attempt a cinematic translation of time into space.

Johan van der Keuken (1938-2001) was a man with a remarkable double talent, who filmed with a photographer’s eye and shot photographs with the eye of a filmmaker. EYE is showing his films and a large number of photographic works and offers insight into how Van der Keuken made his films. Van der Keuken built up an artistically interesting and socially engaged body of work, which demonstrates a clear consistency in form and content. Always on his travels but also close to home, Van der Keuken intercut his observations in Africa, Asia or Latin America with similar or indeed diametrically opposed images or situations. On large freestanding screens, the exhibition shows how Van der Keuken combined different sequences into a single film and how he allows different images to contrast with each other. His method, which is already apparent in the cinematic portraits he made of artists such as Lucebert and Tajiri in the early sixties, has a visually powerful and artistically provocative character. ‘Johan van der Keuken/ Up to the light’ also shows that Van der Keuken was one of the first filmmakers to attempt a cinematic translation of time into space. The simultaneity of images is one of the exhibition’s points of departure.

Van der Keuken presented important or indeed trivial everyday events from various angles, aware of the fact that a single image of reality doesn’t exist. Towards the end of his life he became increasingly interested in how his films and photographs relate to the space in which they are shown.