The Measurement of Presence

The Measurement of PresenceIris Kensmil and Remy Jungerman176 PAGES - 30 X 21.8 CM - SOFTCOVER - ENGLISH EDITION - ISBN: 978 94 9267 780 8 - € 30For the Venice Biennale 2019, Benno Tempel,director of the Gemeentemuseum Den Haagcurated the exhibition The Measurement ofPresence, in which he combines installationsby Remy Jungerman with wall paintings andpaintings by Iris Kensmil.The Measurement of Presence is atransnational presentation that explorestraditions and the past, bringing them intocontact with the present. Jungerman andKensmil gather influences from differentbackgrounds.Remy Jungerman is interested in the pathtravelled by patterns. In his work he combinesmotifs from Africa, Maroon culture, andtwentieth-century modernism. Iris Kensmilinvites us to expand our consciousness onutopian twentieth-century avant-garde andintroduces us to Black female activists andartists who have been neglected for too long.This sensitive and critical stance towardsabstraction and modernism is what connectsthe work of Jungerman and Kensmil. Intheir work they combine the inspirationthey draw from twentieth-century utopianabstract art - in particularly Mondrian andDe Stijl, the Russian avant-garde and stanleybrouwn - with elements of other traditionsand positions. In so doing, they size up theworld. They explore how the presence andvisibility of spirit and history are necessaryto exist. The exhibition also interacts withthe architecture of the pavilion, designed byRietveld.The book is published on the occasion ofThe Measurement of Presence. The VeniceBiennale 2019 takes place from 11 May 'till 24November.