Artists

Sander Breure and Witte van Hulzen

The Dutch artistic duo Sander Breure (°1985) and Witte van Hulzen (°1984) uses diverse media such as video, performance, photography, drawings and installation. Families, migration, insignificant behaviour, the art world and its unwritten laws, the attack on Utøya: the various subjects are always translated into images, with specific attention to the condition humaine. Their work is rooted in a romantic tradition. Due to the way in which they attempt, through the continual reuse of images, to investigate the essence of art and its relationship to our world, that tradition takes on new connotations. Central to their oeuvre is the issue of where images originate, what they portray and what they mean to us.

The Shores Of An Island I Only Skirted

video-installation, sound, 14′ 00″

Sander Breure and Witte van Hulzen’s double projection suggests that we are seeing an image and its reverse, the counter-image. The first screen displays images from a small and seemingly uninhabited island. One might think that this discreet and undisturbed piece of land could offer a paradisiac existence. Only when we learn that this in fact is Utøya, the place of the politically motivated massacre committed by Anders Breivik in 2011, do the images acquire a menacing tone. The reverse side of the screen offers a counter-image, showing a montage of diverse found footage fragments on migration. The reverse movement shows what some people imagine as utopia, is in fact its opposite.