Timo Demollin

NL, 1988
  • resident
    • 2022 – 2024

Timo Demollin’s objects, installations and interventions are oriented toward the critical potential of accounting for the social situatedness of artists, publics and workers in the economy. This practice is largely informed by the neoliberal transformation of state governance and bureaucracy, and their impact on work, industry, infrastructure, and the public sector.

The works presented during Open Studios 2023 shed light on privatisation and market-oriented reforms in the Dutch railway sector and airline industry since 1988—a period defined by competing ideals, such as profit maximisation and social function, free market and state aid, and economic and ecological concerns. These dualisms outline a protracted struggle that continues to this day, as evidenced by recent labour disputes and strikes. A video work assembles 35 years of media discourse through sampling public broadcasting footage, while repurposed industrial materials form witness and testimony to these developments. An aircraft cargo lock replaces the studio door fittings, railway junction boxes connect to lighting, and elsewhere in the Rijksakademie building, steel train equipment has been welded to the guardrail facing the Strategy and Development office. Linking these disparate functions, the artist invites viewers to navigate their subject positions in relation to the conditions of ownership, usership, labour and leisure, which together determine access to both mobility and artistic infrastructure.

Open Archive

td-2018-foundation1.jpg
Foundation, 2018, concrete foundation piles, pavilion closed for the duration of the exhibition as a safety measure to prevent shear failure of the building’s foundation from additional weight. Installation view Foundation, Rietveld Pavilion, Amsterdam, March 15–17, 2018

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