Written by Henri Julien Sandront
The ambitious exhibition-project Out of Storage (temporarily) weds together contemporary artworks with a former crate factory. A selection of works of art of the Fonds Régional d’Art Contemporain collection in Nord-Pas-de-Calais, France, including the likes of Sol Lewitt, Andy Warhol and Christian Boltanski are featured in the renovated factory building the Timmerfabriek in Maastricht until March 25^th.

As part of the aspiration of Maastricht (South-Limburg, Netherlands) to become European capital of culture in 2018, the city has added another cultural hotspot to the already well-furnished list of what the small town has to offer to art-lovers (The Bonnefantenmuseum, Marres and the yearly Tefaf Art Fair amongts others). Nevertheless, this exhibition is unlike any other. The collaboration between Marres Projects (Guus Beumer) and the FRAC Nord-Pas-de-Calais (Hilde Teerlinck), between a Dutch institution and a French one, concretized itself in Out of Storage. The long-run and changing display gives an interesting insight into the matrix of collection-making.

Ortmeyer, Sabotage © Johannes Schwartz

The project can be understood in a straightforward way: the works of art often literally feel as if they had just been taken out of the crates from their depot. Moreover, one should not necessarily come for the aforementioned crowd-pleasing “big” names. The show actually finds its strength in the works of artists that are perhaps a bit less common to the general public such as German-born Sarah Ortmeyer’s Sabotage, a messy ensemble of wooden fragments of what turns out to be traditional Dutchie wooden-clogs spread throughout the concrete floor.

Lavier, Dolly © Johannes Schwartz

Located in a part of the city center through which locals, aside from a group of neighbouring student squatters, do not regularly wander, Out of Storage will intrigue art aficionados from a distance thanks to its large outdoor bill-board/ work of art Marc Wallinger is Innocent by the eponymous artist.  Out of Storage opened in June 2011 and is already going through in the second phase of its life expectancy. An entire hot air balloon by Bertrand Lavier (Dolly) has now replaced the acid-coloured chairs of Danish collective Superflex (Copy Right). It seems like Lavier’s large work unfolded throughout a vast room has been especially commissioned for the location. While two-dimensional works, especially photography hung on the walls, do not particularly make the ideal visual couple with the immensity of the factory-space, design, installations and other more sculptural artworks make the perfect match with industrial context of the Timmerfabriek.

Wallinger, Marc Wallinger is Innocent © Branko Popovic

Out of Storage
26 June 2011 – 25 March 2012
Wednesday – Sunday 11.00 – 17.00 hours

Timmerfabriek
Boschstraat 7–9
6211 AS Maastricht
The Netherlands