Eventually, the entire oeuvre of Loek Grootjans (born 1955, Arnemuiden, NL) will be transferred to the Storage for Distorted Matter. This is one of his long-running projects. Everything left behind by the artist, both mentally and physically, is to be incorporated in this project. Not only his art, but everything related to the artist and his world, is stored, registered, and archived. This is his way of recording his life, but it also confronts us with the impossibility of such an undertaking.
Loek Grootjans: “In 2008, I began pinning down the ‘Storage for Distorted Matter’, especially the ‘Liquid Files’, in their entirety. All that I do or leave behind, all the people I see, places I go, at what time, at what date, everything is recorded. Even the DNA profiles of the people I meet are accessible. This means that every single aspect of me, Loek Grootjans, can be tracked down. I might be the only artist who has immortalised himself like this.”
This all-encompassing attempt has always been a major factor in Grootjans’ work. The unachievability of the attempt could be called a ‘hopeful’ failure. For his project ‘Storage for Distorted Matter’ (2008 – ongoing), Loek Grootjans is collecting almost anything, bottles with samples of the great masters, his own filth, the ground Vincent van Gogh was born on, 21st-century masterpieces that cannot be made, the water that people washed up in on the Vlieland shore, the light Piet Mondrian first saw when he entered Domburg.
But also something as simple as his own dust, a sublimated version of which is incorporated in his work The Remembering Department as part of his S.M.A.K. solo exhibition of 2010, and which led to its inclusion in the museum collection.
Comprising over 300 bottles of liquids, their accompanying sediments in petri dishes, and descriptions, the Liquid Files are currently the largest and most thorough project making up the Storage for Distorted Matter. Traces of Pasolini, the remains of a kiss from Broodthaers’ widow, the olives from Leonardo da Vinci’s olive grove, salt crystals from the sea at Domburg, cleaning residue from Brodski’s grave.
We will provide the Liquid Files with a special display setting at h3h biennial. The bottles will be lit from the bottom, creating an intriguing visual effect.
