Eva Meijer-Hermann in cooperation with De Rijke & De Rooij (ed.) With essays by Diedrich Diederichsen and Georg Schöllhammer

Jeroen de Rijke & Willem de Rooij
Spaces and Films/Espaces et Films 1998-2002

Design: Yvonne Quirmbach, Paperback, illustrated (colour and b/w), 102 pages, size: 23 x 18 cm
Text in English and French, ISBN 90-70149-87-7 / 978-90-70149-87-1, / OUT OF PRINT

NAi Publishers in cooperation with the Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum Eindhoven and Villa Arson, Nice.

The collaboration between Dutch artists Jeroen de Rijke and Willem de Rooij started when they were students at the Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam. Joint projects from those days are the films Chun Tian (1994) and Forever and Ever (1995). These two short film works form the intriguing start of a developing oeuvre that is strong and exciting. Instead of sensationalism and special effects, they present quiet images - often only one continuous shot - that invite careful study. In a sense they are returning to the early days of film when the Lumière brothers aimed a stationary camera at a factory gate. The neutral, observing tone that gives the films of De Rijke/De Rooij their ambivalent tension is matched by the way in which they present their work in museums and galleries. Their work is internationally well known and highly appreciated. Their work was presented in museums in Brussels, Cologne, Luxembourg, Amsterdam, Eindhoven, Paris, Frankfurt am Main, Yokohama and Kyoto.

This artist's book focuses on their last four 35-mm films (1998-2002) paying particular attention to the growing importance of the phenomenological and iconographic aspects of their work. In addition it illustrates specific exhibition situations in a visual manifesto of their artistic thinking, complemented by enligthening essays by Diedrich Diederichsen and Georg Schöllhammer, and detailed description of the four films.