WKNDX : Danni van Amstel in Electron Breda

Electron Breda presents new exhibition opportunities in WKNDX: Weekend exhibitions at the Kopse Kant. Every Friday we have new talent, art students in their final (3rd/4th) year and alumni from different academies and in different disciplines showing their work. 

In my work I question what kind of effect inhabitation has on a space. I am interested in the notion of embodied space: how people by inhabiting a space leave behind traces, their breath, their use of space, the wear and tear they cause, the objects they use, and the traces of their thoughts and memories.

A space we inhabit can be seen as a labyrinth of our mind in which our thoughts and memories were around. How does the relationship between our memories and a certain space effects the way we shape our thoughts about other spaces and how are our thoughts connected to these other spaces? How can we expand our understand of the “domestic” and habitation beyond the structures of the house?

The house is not simply a geometric form that we inhabit, but it houses memories, which can open new spaces that can evoke different memories.

My installations often occur as a relic of an inhabited space, in which some elements are left. Reduced to an essential and poetic image, where I am in search of the boundary between utensil and sculpture. My works seems to leave behind a trace, a memory, a gesture in the space.

In my work I often use casts of objects that indicate (past) occupation. I try to recreate the object, in metal, wood, ceramic or glass. The object is abstracted but is still recognizable. The characteristics of the material and the technique of making is leading in this creating process. Such as a glass rack in my bathroom with metal holders that I made molds of. The metal holders are re-cast in metal, wherein the seam of the mold is also poured into the form of the mold. It is also visible in the making process of the glass, as the glass plate was putt on a plaster plate that entered into the oven. In the oven, the glass plate was deformed due to the plaster cracking and also because of the melting process of the glass itself. My works have minor imperfections and changes, so they become more distant from the original. Just like memories moving further away from the initial moment, affected by the passed time and change of context.