Arjan Post

Netherlands, 1994

www.arjan-post.com

Thesis: The City of Images

 

Now that I am there

Installation, Hourglass building, 3 photographs, UV-print on forex, 300 x 200 cm

 

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Arjan Post constructs situations with the visitor in mind, installing photographs in specific locations as clues to a larger floor plan. Encountering his large-scale photographs of a white, hourglass-shaped building in Amsterdam Zuid, they act as signposts that reassure the visitor they are in the right place. Captured at ground level from two different angles, the photographs have intentionally been installed across from the actual view of the buildings seen through the windows of the Rietveld building. Simultaneously situated in the photographs and in reality, we feel close to and far from these buildings at the same time.

 

If we look closely enough, we witness a third image installed on the rooftop of the Fedlev building, a signal to navigate towards it. Once we’ve reached the rooftop, we are again offered alternative views of the building through the printed image connected to the actual cityscape. Now that I’m outside, I naturally turn around, searching for the previous images in my memory. By placing the visitor in multiple spaces all at once, Arjan’s proposition to re-see reality becomes both a lived and imagined experience.

 

 

Text written by Michelle Son