From 15-01-2000 until 12-02-2000

Once someone set about the task of making a drawing of the world. Over the course of many years he populated a space with depictions of provinces, nations, mountains, bays, ships, islands, fish, houses, instruments, stars, horses and people. Shortly before he died, he discovered that this patient labyrinth of lines was a depiction of his own face.
Jorge Luis Borges


The Netherlands Media Art Institute, Montevideo/Time Based Arts presents an exhibition of the work of Nol de Koning (b. 1944, Amsterdam). In 1985 Nol de Koning began making five paintings involving the seven circles of hell in Dante's Inferno, the region where those guilty of violence, dissipation, fanaticism and usury undergo their punishment. These paintings form the basis of Terra Morale, a cycle of video works. All of the installations shown can be considered as a paysage moralisé. Both their form and content is inspired by classical literature (Dante, Virgil, Vitruvius, Hesiod). In this literature 'the heavens and the earth, the sea and the wind, lightning and volcanos are constantly used as symbols for developments in and around the inner life of the characters, and for the spiritual, cosmological and political abstractions that are being unfolded.' (V. Pöschl). For that reason, landscapes and elements of nature play an important role in Nol de Koning's video works. But modern writers including Borges, Lautréamont and Connolly have also had an important influence on his work. Nol de Koning combines music, sound and contemporary television material with his work.



The oeuvre exhibition Terra Morale comprises six video installations, four of which (Bulicame (1987-1988), Palinuro (1989), Miseno (1990) and Vulcano Eolico (1991-1992)) come from the period 1987-1992, and two new installations, Malebolge (1999) and Nox Umida (ready end 1999). Further, four paintings will be shown from the cycle from which the first installation, Bulicame, arose, and there are various etches, drawings and publications to be seen from the period before the artist began to produce video works.

---

Art channel Amsterdam C, Sunday, January 9: broadcast of a tape of Nox Umida, made especially for the Art Channel; repeated every two hours. Copies of this tape (VHS) will be available during the exhibition.

>50% Image, Tuesday, January 18, 2 Hoog Achter: doors open 8:00 p.m., a full evening's programme with Nol de Koning, Jan Hein Sassen (Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam) and David Rijser around the exhibition Terra Morale. Entrance fee NLG 7,50 (students NLG 5); reservations ( 31) (0)20 623 7101.


Thanks to:
With thanks to the Fund for the Visual Arts, Design and Architecture, the Amsterdam Art Fund, Art Channel and Studio Van Klaveren, Naarden. Computer graphics: Paul Vink