Annet Gelink Gallery proudly presents the group exhibition Chasing Rainbows. The poetic title is derived from a work of the same name by Anya Gallaccio. 'Chasing Rainbows' is a saying, used to describe when one tries in vain to realise something impossible. In 1998 Gallaccio turned this expression into reality. With light and fine glass elements, she created a rainbow that was continuously shifting and disappearing from the spectator's field of vision, each time at the moment they wanted to come closer. This elusive quality sets the tone for Chasing Rainbows, the exhibition.
The work of Anya Gallaccio, Antonis Pittas and Sarah van Sonsbeeck is as elusive as Gallaccio's shifting rainbow. In Chasing Rainbows their work meets for the first time and it is striking how much time, transformation and space play a role in all of their practices. The site-specific installations in Chasing Rainbows not only change meaning during their exhibition but sometimes even change their forms.
Anya Gallaccio's work consists mainly of organic materials which are transformed during their exhibition. For Chasing Rainbows Anya Gallaccio will install the work Head over heals (Barcelona) from 1995, consisting of 365 orange Gerberas strung together in the form of a daisy chain. Sarah van Sonsbeeck presents Moment of Bliss (2011), a light installation made for the Funeral Museum (Uitvaartmuseum) in Amsterdam. With this work Van Sonsbeeck imitates the colours of a sunset, simply because they make you happy. The installation conforms effortlessly to the gallery's space and illuminates the visitors both literally and metaphorically. Antonis Pittas contributes his marble sculpture Landart (2012) - a replica of a step of the Syndagma Square in Athens - on which a sample from a newspaper headline is hand drawn in graphite. The text confers the harsh words of Christine Lagarde, director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), in which Lagarde reminds Greece of the fact that they are struggling with economic problems, and of their obligation towards the international community by repeating time and again the word 'implementation'. Pittas takes the words out of their original context and investigates how they can have a new meaning within the gallery's space. Just like Gallaccio's work, Landart has an evolving nature: Pittas will return to the work midway through the exhibitions period and erase the sentence, replacing it with a new sentiment. At the end of the exhibition the new sentence is removed and only the memory will remain.
Chasing Rainbows also marks the moment at which the large monographic publication Anya Gallaccio, will be launched. This book, with essays by Norman Bryson, Briony Fer, Lucia Sanromán and Jan van Adrichem, is available in the gallery. In addition, the publication Sessizlik Belediyesi / Municipality of Silence, Sarah van Sonsbeeck's latest book, will be celebrated. In this book, in her continuous search for silence, Van Sonsbeeck has invited her friends and colleagues to define what silence means to them.