Sandberg Institute Graduation Show
14 June – 21 June 2017

Materialisation in Art and Design (MAD) is a temporary department of the Sandberg Institute taught by Herman Verkerk and Maurizio Montalti. It has a strong emphasis on the characteristics intrinsic to various materials and techniques. The collective consists of artists and designers. By working alongside one another, the course participants learn to cross the borders of their disciplines and to challenge the conventional hierarchy between concept and creation.

MAD see their work as an urgent response to our increasingly technological world – a place in which we are losing touch with the knowledge that can only be discovered through doing, pushing, toiling and failing. MAD brings us back to the material and presents the medium as a meaningful as the carrier of the message, its narrative and its function. The material expression of the work is paramount.

Looiersgracht 60 has hosted Sandberg events in the past and is looking forward to welcoming the Institute back again on 14-21 June for the MAD graduation show. The show is curiously entitled ‘Does this count as Protein?’ Perhaps slightly confusing, the title is symptomatic of MAD’s simultaneously critical, questioning and casual approach. The show is the culmination of two years of intensive material experimentation and exploration. It presents the concepts and practices that have been developed and that are now poised to further develop in context beyond the scope of the course.

The participating students are:

Anne Büscher

Carly Rose Bedford

Caroline Jacob

Dominique Festa

Ellen Vårtun

Iris Box

Johan Romme

Julien Manaira

Mio Fujimaki

Oliver Barstow

Thom van Hoek