location: multiple sites
period: development: 2014 - 2019

presentation: 2019 - 2021
description: fourteen double-sided photo-panels
(image on front and text on backside) on polyester
textile with aluminum stretcher frame. Sizes vary in
width between 82” and 200” and height between 76”
and 133”. Wooden bench, mp3 player and headset.
support: Amsterdam Fund for the Arts (AFK) City of Amsterdam, district East, Foundation Kunstwerk Loods 6, Kunsthal 45
Advice, co-curator: Iris Dik

The project A Given Space is an interdisciplinary collaboration, which visualizes the spatial concepts of artists in a remarkable way. The project consists of fourteen extreme large photo-panels, installed freestanding in the exhibition space.

Each panel shows a photograph which is the outcome of a collaboration that starts with an invitation to the artist, to create an installation, artwork or application for a specific space . This ‘space’ however is one of the many photographs of empty rooms that Jan Theun van Rees created over the course of many years. An extreme large print of this photographed space will be installed on the artist’s studio. The space is therefor only illusion and physical flat as paper.

Each artist has complete freedom to interpret the assignment to one’s liking. personal requests and will be granted as much as possible, so that the artist’s ideas will be realized as well as possible.

When the work is completed, the installation will be photographed. Each collaboration starts with a photograph and will be concluded with a photograph as well. between the first photograph on the wall and the final photograph at the end, the artist took possession over the given space. The artistic choices are visible in the ”space” between the first photograph on the wall of the studio and the surface of the final photograph in the exhibition. This final photograph shows a layered space; there is the spatial illusion of the photograph on the wall, often together with parts of the studio space, the artist’s application is ”weaved” in between the different photographical layers.

Every artist has assigned a different space, which makes all the images in the project completely different from each other. This is to emphasize the large diversity of the artists’ spatial assumptions. Every photograph represents a different world of ideas. By presenting the images as free-standing panels, each photograph has its own viewing line so that the images can be viewed separate.