Of Gaia and Ouranos
Roger Cremers and Doina Kraal
25 November – 22 December 2023

Public opening: Sat 25 November, 19:30-22:00, performance, 20:00

Looiersgracht 60 and arts collective Radical Reversibility are pleased to invite you to Of Gaia and Ouranos, a new exhibition by Roger Cremers and Doina Kraal. In the summer of 2022 Cremers and Kraal, were invited by Looiersgracht 60 and Radical Reversibility, as the first participants of the Public Research Residency, an initiative from Looiersgracht 60 aiming to expand dialogues surrounding research-based practice through public programming and community conversation. Spiritus: Archiving the (Un)imaginable, was the title of Cremers and Kraal’s time in residence and the genesis for many of the installations that make up Of Gaia and Ouranos.

The exhibition works from a transhistorical approach to materiality, ideas, and media, questioning how the past, present, and future can illuminate each other. Borrowing historical techniques, investigative strategies, and exhibition formats, such as the peepshow box (or rarekiek), the diafanorama, and 17th-century tapestry weaving, the works consider the obsolescence of media and its effect on knowledge and storytelling. The work of Kraal and Cremers reanimates these lost objects and their ability to communicate the questions of material, imaginative, and cosmic knowledge.

Of Gaia and Ouranos displays immersive installations and sculptures, in textile, wood, and glass, as well as a ‘living archive’ of inspirational imagery. The installations are a careful balance of found and repurposed materials along with uniquely crafted objects inspired by their research. On view in Looiersgracht 60’s ground floor gallery is the centrepiece Perpetual Light, a large installation made from a set of custom jacquard woven and embroidered tapestries - a portable universe for looking at ourselves amidst a mesmerising world of plants, animals, and celestial phenomena, turning anthropocentric perspective on its head and inspiring cosmic modesty. Of Ouranos and Kronos is an installation adapted for the basement of Looiersgracht 60 and contains a collection of custom-cast uranium glass, exploring visualisations of time and space.

The works brought together for Of Gaia and Ouranos touch on transhistorical imagination, time travel, speculative visions of extra-terrestrial life, and the sense and nonsense of cosmic knowledge. Exploring different ways of materializing and activating Gaia’s relation to Ouranos, the exhibition invites the spiritual, Ouranos, to meet the material, Gaia, in the hopes of merging into one.