VISIONAIR-08 (Paul Hendrikse: Multiple Exposure #2)

Visionair-08 is the eigth edition of an annual initiative that e/static began in 2001. This year’s featured artists are: Michael Graeve, an Australian, who performed Thursday 4 December 4 2008, and Dutch artist Paul Hendrikse, performing Thursday December 11 2008.
At visionair-08 PAUL HENDRIKSE will show a new work that he produced for the occasion. “Multiple Exposure” is a series of works that focus on existing persons. These persons have in common that they are or have been mediated figures. “Multiple Exposure #2” starts from the person of Latif Yahia. During the last five years Hendrikse followed Yahia on the internet. Every year on a fixed day he downloaded all imagery that he could find of him. Yahia used to be the body-double of the late son of Saddam Hussein, Udai. Yahia underwent a training and plastic surgery to look exactly like him. He would appear at moments that Udai was abroad or when it would be too dangerous for him to appear in public. After his escape from Iraq in 1991 during the first Gulf War he fled to Vienna where he went into hiding for several years. When Austria refused to grant him a permanent asylum he drifted through Europe for several years. He ended up in Ireland and started working as a private detective. In 1995 he published his first auto-biographical book. During the second invasion in Iraq he became a frequently asked spokes person in the media. Yahia has had a great number of identities during the last 18 years, most of these are mediated, in different contexts he was body-double, asylum seeker, private detective, media-figure, author and recently actor. In this new work Hendrikse starts from the figure Yahia and draws bigger lines, he thereby touches subjects as authenticity, the copy and the original and the role of mediated images in our society.

Paul Hendrikse (NL, 1977) lives and works in Berlin and Antwerp. He studied sculpture in ‘s-Hertogenbosch, NL and Architecture in Antwerp. Recently he finished a postgraduate at the Jan van Eyck Academy in Maastricht. Next to his practise he has been curating for project space Artis in ‘s Hertogen-bosch. Hendrikse creates extensions of existing architecture, art and literature. By placing a second object next to it’s “mould”, the space between the two becomes important. Within this resonance new meaning can reveal and articulate itself. His production varies in medium and form; a book, a performance, a story, an object or a video can all be outcomes of the artistic research. He collaborated in different constellations with Martin Nachbar, Alphonso Lingis, Aryan Kaganof, Lilia Mestre, Ashraf Jamal and others. In recent years his work has been shown at Stuk, Leuven, BE; Nicc Antwerp; W139, Amsterdam; Keith Talent Gallery, London; Kunstlerverrein Malkasten, Duesseldorf; Camden Arts Centre, London; International Film Festival Rotterdam; CAPE, Cape Town; Middelheim Museum, Antwerp; and at e/static → blank, Torino.