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“The Architecture of the City, the Architecture of the Forest”. The project arose from a feeling to intuit similarities between the forest and the city. An underlying hidden language of emergences and phenomena, to which the forest and the urban space are equally subject. Photography is a constant companion in my artistic process. In ‘The Architecture Of The Forest’ the photographs themselves become an autonomous body of work. From 2020 till today, I accumulated hundreds of photographs, exploring the forest as a space of poetic moments.
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I have a small gallery within my home. Exhibitions of befriended artists take place here in an intimate atmosphere. Now and then, I will give insight into my artistic process. In the current exhibition, Werkschau 01/22, I am showcasing works and fragments related to my ongoing project, The Architecture of the City, the Architecture of the Forest. Here I investigate subtle analogies between the two spaces in a poetic manner. On display, waiting for you to play with, is a prototype of my installation Nightingale, A Collage of Subtle Feelings. Through photographs, sound, natural and artificial elements, I explore a subtle feeling, which I suspect leads to a connection between the city, architecture, scripture, and the forest. The home gallery can be visited by appointment. Please contact homegallery@alexanderjohannes.com _______________________________________________________ Program 2022: • 1/2/22 - 6/3/22 Alexander Johannes Heil, Werkschau 01/22, Nightingale. • 24/3/22 - 1/5/22 vis á vis with Jan Huijben, Magrathea. • 5/5/22 - 22/5/22 Alexander Johannes Heil, Werkschau 02/22, 3 x 5m. • 2/6/22 - 26/6/22 vis á vis with Katherina Heil and Rik Möhlmann (exhibition title pending). • 14/7/22 - 21/8/22 Alexander Johannes Heil, Werkschau 03/22, Through The Looking Glass. • the home gallery is open for one more vis à vis in 2022, please sent your proposals (see below)! _______________________________________________________ Proposals: My home gallery is open for proposals. The concept here is that I create an installation or exhibition setup inspired by the invited artist's work, and the invitees react to the space I created. I call this concept vis à vis. Please feel free to send me your proposal via homegallery@alexanderjohannes.com.
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A geo-located composition created from the sounds of De Fabriek Eindhoven De Fabriek Eindhoven is one of the oldest art initiatives in the Netherlands. It is situated in a former bookbinding factory with two main floors. A vast cellar with a series of concrete columns and a great hall with a vaulted ceiling. It's particular sound qualities and the sounds the building creates by itself are often topic of conversation during exhibitions and events at de Fabriek. Alexander Johannes Heil sees the building as a huge instrument with it's own agency. From field recordings he took at de Fabriek during September and October 2022, he created a geo-located spatial composition with a radius of approximately 2 km. Like in a cubist painting the spectator will experience the sound objects scattered, simultaneously, and overlapping in time and space while approaching the building.
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The work consists of a 4-channel field-recording, capturing the first hour of the year 2021 from a field amidst a nature park in the north of Germany and a photograph of the spot where the recorder was placed, printed on a towel. "Keep your towel on". •••direct-link: http://alexanderjohannes.com/thefirsthour.html
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A project initiated by Katherina Heil in collaboration with Alexander Heil and Rik Möhlmann at De Fabriek Eindhoven. ‘As a particle of the atmosphere is never lost, so sound is never lost. A strain of music or a simple tone will vibrate in the air forever and ever, decreasing according to a fixed ratio. The diffusion of the agitation extends in all directions, like the waves in a pool, but the ear is unable to detect it beyond a certain point. It is well known that some individuals can distinguish sounds which to others under precisely similar circumstances are wholly lost. Thus the fault is not in the sound itself, but in our organ of hearing, and a tone once in existence is always in existence.’ [Florence McLandburgh The Automaton Ear 1876] I am walking on the beach. The wind swirls around my body. The waves wash the shore, crashing onto the land in an endless phasing repetition, creating an oscillating swell of noise. I encounter a sea shell. I lift it towards my ear – a maze of sound reveals itself to me. We live immersed in a world of sound. However, most of the sounds are filtered out by the shape of our ear. With this project we want to include ourselves deeply within this world, which extends beyond our daily experience. And thus we began our intuitive search for the relations between the ear, its form, and the resulting sound experience. Eventually, all human ears are built using the same blueprint. Nevertheless, every ear is uniquely shaped like a fingerprint and thus influences our subjective acoustic experience of the world. One could say, that listening beings all together live in their subjective sonic worlds. Therefore, we invented the concept of the Ohriversum (German ‘Ear-verse’) in which the entirety of all listening beings establishes a spatial constellation of these individual worlds. ‘Ohriversum’ takes place as part of the ‘Sensory Threshold LAB’. A group of artists exploring the inaudible dimensions of our reality, forming new collaborations, narratives and metaphors. concept: KATHERINA HEIL, ALEXANDER HEIL, RIK MÖHLMANN contributing artists: SARAH ROSE GUITIAN NEDERLOF, FARZANÉ NOURI, GIJSJE HEEMSKERK, KIM DAVID BOTS Installation: 22 cubic meters sand, plastic bags, textile, wood, speakers, various microphones, laptop, 4 channel speaker system, 117 ceramic sculptures around 20 x 20cm, leader, metal pot and bowl, towels, drawings on paper.
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Thrown In Various Random Directionsinfo
"A thunderstorm is approaching from afar, saturating the atmosphere with moisture, making it soft and wet. Clouds are hanging low and the sun is about to go. Light-waves arriving from million miles away diving into this massive liquid body, scattering, thrown in various random directions, embracing your world with deep purple." Thrown In Various Random Directions was a quadro-phonic, spatial, walk-in installation created for the KABK Graduation Show 2020. The speakers were directed towards the walls in a way that they reflected and scattered the sound throughout the room, making it hard to locate the individual sources. The scattering of the sound was used as an analogy to the scattering of light before or after major storms, an atmospheric effect which makes the sky appear purple to the human eye. The sound piece derived from my thesis Substanzraum, A new Approach To Global Space and was further developped into my geo-located audio walk - SubstanzWalk, Introduction to Substanzraum - in the Westduinpark at the beach of The Hague. ••• direkt-link: http://alexanderjohannes.com/graduation2020.html
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The Singing Sculpture is inspired by shapes observed on the beach. The Trees here, are constantly exposed by the ocean winds, shaped over time, and bent in generous gestures. Their formal expression suggest musicality and produces expectations for certain sound qualities or tonal characteristics. Yet, the Singing Sculpture is a silent instrument. Alexander likes to play with the interdisciplinary, the synesthetic, and the translations from one medium into another. Eventually, the gently swinging sculpture is moving the air and isn’t this what sound is, moving air? brass tube, medium-density fibre-board (MDF) ca. 200 cm x 300 cm x 100 cm
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A geo-located audio-walk in the dunes of The Hague. Accessible via smart phone app Location: Westduinpark, The Hague, The Netherlands ••• direct-link: http://alexanderjohannes.com/pubsubmap.html
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"A thunderstorm is approaching from afar, saturating the atmosphere with moisture, making it soft and wet. Clouds are hanging low and the sun is about to go. Light-waves arriving from million miles away diving into this massive liquid body, scattering, thrown in various random directions, embracing your world with deep purple." Thrown In Various Random Directions was a quadro-phonic, spatial, walk-in installation created for the KABK Graduation Show 2020. The speakers were directed towards the walls in a way that they reflected and scattered the sound throughout the room, making it hard to locate the individual sources. The scattering of the sound was used as an analogy to the scattering of light before or after major storms, an atmospheric effect which makes the sky appear purple to the human eye. The sound piece derived from my thesis Substanzraum, A new Approach To Global Space and was further developped into my geo-located audio walk - SubstanzWalk, Introduction to Substanzraum - in the Westduinpark at the beach of The Hague. ••• direct-link: http://alexanderjohannes.com/graduation2020.html Photo: Charlotte Brand
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An essay on my concept of Substanzraum, the Space of Substance. This new concept of space, is analog to the dialectic of mold and cast. It considers global space filled with actual substances traveling throughout our planet, shaping each other through time and gravity and thus shaping the space we live in. Excerpt/Introduction: This is the story of the invention of a new spatial concept that is analog to the dialectic of mold and cast. While looking into a vast natural scenery, our gaze is locating landmarks comprised of objects and frames to hold on to, to differentiate areas and to order the larger space with its hard to grasp entirety. Space itself is floating, or streaming between these landmarks. The global space is filled with actual substances traveling around the planet, shaping each other through time and gravity and thus shaping the space we live in. I call this conception of space Substanzraum, the space of substance. ••• direct-link: http://www.alexanderjohannes.com/sanpatgs.html
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The violation of space itself through the act of measuring and the application of any geometrical system based on a purely intellectual and abstract art of rendering space onto land, in order to map it, can always have only one purpose: appropriation. Why measuring space, if not to conquer it? Text fragment from my essay Substanzraum - A new approach to global Space. Continue reading on my website (works, Substanzraum)
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A process leads to a result. At least that is the most fashionable idea amongst humans. The rubbing of a string results in the vibration of a string and in turn causes the air around it to move, causing changes in space, the space of substance -Substanzraum. Moving through the air, the change, which is commonly envisioned as a wave, hits the surface of a glass bowl, penetrates the material, enters the water, and is perceived by joe, the goldfish, and he moves, causing changes, which are commonly envisioned as waves, a change in space, the space of substance - Substanzraum. The movement raises the temperature of the water, not detectable by any means of measuring. It also causes the water to dissolve into the air a tiny fraction faster, compared to the time when joe is just floating in the glass bowl. An eruption of water vapour, unseen, unheard, undetectable by any means of measuring. ••• direct-link: http://www.alexanderjohannes.com/sanpatgs.html
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A process leads to a result. At least that is the most fashionable idea amongst humans. The rubbing of a string results in the vibration of a string and in turn causes the air around it to move, causing changes in space, the space of substance -Substanzraum. Moving through the air, the change, which is commonly envisioned as a wave, hits the surface of a glass bowl, penetrates the material, enters the water, and is perceived by joe, the goldfish, and he moves, causing changes, which are commonly envisioned as waves, a change in space, the space of substance - Substanzraum. The movement raises the temperature of the water, not detectable by any means of measuring. It also causes the water to dissolve into the air a tiny fraction faster, compared to the time when joe is just floating in the glass bowl. An eruption of water vapour, unseen, unheard, undetectable by any means of measuring. ••• direct-link: http://www.alexanderjohannes.com/sanpatgs.html
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"Wouldn't it be a wonderful utopia, if a single controlled intervention could cause all the following natural processes to fall into place as planned, so that eventually and over time, structures emerge in which people could live in?" ••• direct-link: http://www.alexanderjohannes.com/sanpatgs.html
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8 Probes Of Substanzraum is a performative piece in two parts: 'collecting' and 'giving'. Collected in a windy night at the beach of Den Haag, I brought 8 probes of beach, ocean and atmosphere as presents to my colleagues at the ArtScience Interfaculty (Royal Conservatory/Royal Academy of Art The Hague). This work is the first of many, evolving out of my project Going To The Beach As Artistic Research Practice, which eventually lead to my spatial notion of Substanzraum.
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An essay and field study on the formal dialectics of nature and architecture. Alongside positions of various architects and thinkers of architectural formal expression and space, I am describing my first hand experiences of several spaces, architectural and natural alike. The text is accompanied by a series of black and white photographs. Exerpt/Introduction: Ainsi toute la Philosophie est comme un arbre, dont les racines sont la Métaphysique, le tronce est la Physique, et les branches qui sortent de ce tronce sont toutes les autres sciences. René Descartes From a letter to Abbé Claude Picot I wonder if this parable can be applied to architecture? Would the trunk of this tree represent nature? And would the branches represent the entirety of architecture, with all its different formal phenomena and stylistic expressions? If so, nature would not be the last link in this chain. There would exist something even deeper: the root, the metaphysic fundament, inherent in nature as well as in architecture, which nourishes the architecture by permeating nature. ••• direct-link: http://alexanderjohannes.com/moa.html
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Ainsi toute la Philosophie est comme un arbre, dont les racines sont la Métaphysique, le tronce est la Physique, et les branches qui sortent de ce tronce sont toutes les autres sciences. René Descartes From a letter to Abbé Claude Picot I wonder if this parable can be applied to architecture? Would the trunk of this tree represent nature? And would the branches represent the entirety of architecture, with all its different formal phenomena and stylistic expressions? If so, nature would not be the last link in this chain. There would exist something even deeper: the root, the metaphysic fundament, inherent in nature as well as in architecture, which nourishes the architecture by permeating nature. (from Alexander Johannes Heil, Metaphysics of Architecture 2017) ••• direct-link: http://alexanderjohannes.com/moa.html
Websites
personal website
www.alexanderjohannes.comHome Gallery The Hague
homegallery.alexanderjohannes.comSocial media
Member of Artists’ Initiative/Collective/Incubator
Sensory Threshold LAB
Curriculum vitae
Education
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2018 - 2020M.Mus. ArtScience, ArtScience Interfaculty Den Haag Koninklijke Conservatorium diploma
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2018 - 2020M.Mus. ArtScience, ArtScience Interfaculty Den Haag, Koninklijke Academie van Beeldende Kunsten diploma
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2012 - 2017BSc. Architecture Technische Universität Berlin diploma
exhibitions
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2022RSVP Billytown The Hague, Netherlands After almost two years of shuffling between togetherness and isolation, we recognize the importance of connections, conversations and working relationships as a necessity for any artistic practice. Artists don’t exist in a vacuum, they are part of intricate networks of colleagues, friends, teachers, and family. While we may not yet be able to bring people together, we can bring works together. For this exhibition artists from within Billytown each invited a guest to show a work in parallel with their own. Within this collection of fifteen duo shows, we find artists who collided overseas and ended up living in the same city, and others who passed each other once and never again. Some saw the artist first, others saw their work first, even years beforehand. There are people who have never met, years-long collaborations, provocative challenges, or simply guests who provide encouragement and inspiration. Theoretical connections, material connections, and connections between the present and past. In Billytown, we feel the generative intimacy of working together, but also the chaos it brings. While the connection between each pair is the primary focus, new and unexpected connections appear between other works in the space. As such, each duet provides a guiding voice within the often chaotic context of a large group show. From the wide variety of motivations and impulses behind each artist's invitation, questions arise about the nature of invitation and the potential of collaboration." Peter van Beveren & Hans Bellmer Melle de Boer & Wim Gijzen Kim David Bots & Eliane Bots Afra Eisma & Marnix van Uum Katherina Heil & Alexander Heil Sam Hersbach & Vita Soul Wilmering Robbin Heyker & Ma Jia Paul de Jong & Sjuul Joosen Maja Klaassens & Christofer Degrér Rik Möhlmann & Gijsje Heemskerk Bernice Nauta & Juan Pablo Plazas Robbert Pauwels & Tim Breukers Iede Reckman & Derk Thijs Jiajia Qi & Fumi Takenouchi Marieke van’t Zet & Machteld Solinger www.billytown.org Group
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2022Sensory Threshold LAB 2022: HOLY GRID! Billytown The Hague, Netherlands During Sensory Threshold LAB 2022, HOLY GRID! at Billytown in The Hague, the participants were invited to create, enact, think and talk about grids of all imaginable manifestations. This can be the pavement of a sidewalk, the invisible grid of a computer-generated landscape, or a social grid. www.sensorythresholdlab.org Group
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2022Dutch Design Week De Fabriek Eindhoven Eindhoven, Netherlands De Fabriek Eindhoven is one of the oldest art initiatives in the Netherlands. It is situated in a former bookbinding factory with two main floors. A vast cellar with a series of concrete columns and a great hall with a vaulted ceiling. It's particular sound qualities and the sounds the building creates by itself are often topic of conversation during exhibitions and events at de Fabriek. Alexander Johannes Heil sees the building as a huge instrument with it's own agency. From field recordings he took at de Fabriek during September and October 2022, he created a geo-located spatial composition with a radius of approximately 2 km. Like in a cubist painting the spectator will experience the sound objects scattered, simultaneously, and overlapping in time and space while approaching the building. Please bring your Smartphone and Headphones! This work is an audio piece accessible via the smartphone app Echoes. Echoes is funded through Echoes Labs projects and its wonderful Open Collective community (no ads, no data sales). ddw.nl/en/programme/9069/the-whalesong-project Group
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2021Sensory Threshold LAB 2021 - OHRIVERSUM De Fabriek Eindhoven Eindhoven, Netherlands Sensory Threshold LAB 2021 - OHRIVERSUM A project initiated by Katherina Heil in collaboration with Alexander Heil and Rik Möhlmann at De Fabriek Eindhoven. ‘As a particle of the atmosphere is never lost, so sound is never lost. A strain of music or a simple tone will vibrate in the air forever and ever, decreasing according to a fixed ratio. The diffusion of the agitation extends in all directions, like the waves in a pool, but the ear is unable to detect it beyond a certain point. It is well known that some individuals can distinguish sounds which to others under precisely similar circumstances are wholly lost. Thus the fault is not in the sound itself, but in our organ of hearing, and a tone once in existence is always in existence.’ [Florence McLandburgh The Automaton Ear 1876] I am walking on the beach. The wind swirls around my body. The waves wash the shore, crashing onto the land in an endless phasing repetition, creating an oscillating swell of noise. I encounter a sea shell. I lift it towards my ear – a maze of sound reveals itself to me. We live immersed in a world of sound. However, most of the sounds are filtered out by the shape of our ear. With this project we want to include ourselves deeply within this world, which extends beyond our daily experience. And thus we began our intuitive search for the relations between the ear, its form, and the resulting sound experience. Eventually, all human ears are built using the same blueprint. Nevertheless, every ear is uniquely shaped like a fingerprint and thus influences our subjective acoustic experience of the world. One could say, that listening beings all together live in their subjective sonic worlds. Therefore, we invented the concept of the Ohriversum (German ‘Ear-verse’) in which the entirety of all listening beings establishes a spatial constellation of these individual worlds. ‘Ohriversum’ takes place as part of the ‘Sensory Threshold LAB’. A group of artists exploring the inaudible dimensions of our reality, forming new collaborations, narratives and metaphors. concept: KATHERINA HEIL, ALEXANDER HEIL, RIK MÖHLMANN contributing artists: SARAH ROSE GUITIAN NEDERLOF, FARZANÉ NOURI, GIJSJE HEEMSKERK, KIM DAVID BOTS www.sensorythresholdlab.org Group
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2020working title: Substanzraum Royal Academy of Art The Hague, Netherlands Self initiated reading and presentation of 3 works in progress: 'Journey To Mars' - live audio/visual; 'You Being Here Is Enough Already' - interactive sound installation; 'Substanzraum T.O.W.' spatial installation with live sound performance. performance. alexanderjohannes.com/ Group
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2020CASS Concert Royal Academy of Art The Hague, Netherlands Presentation of the live audio/visual work 'Journey To Mars' at CASS (Composition, ArtScience, Sonology) Concert at the auditorium of the Royal Academy of Art The Hague. www.facebook.com/CASSConcert/?fref=tag Group
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2019Killing Horizons Quartair Contemporary Art Initiatives The Hague, Netherlands The ArtScience Masters - first year - showcase their works and processes of a year-long incubation. ArtScience is about killing what one might imagine on the horizon; it demands change in perspective and the axis of the exhibition is disorientingly interdisciplinary. From mechanical sculptures, sound and light installations, to augmented reality and performances, the experimentation is the crucial part of our process and we are interested in the unexpected outcomes. www.quartair.nl Group
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2019Susan, Bites & Videotapes Susan Bites The Hague, Netherlands Filmscreening and talk about my short film 'Premonitions Of Substanzraum' at Susan Bites in The Hague. thebalcony-thehague.hotglue.me/?Susanbites Group
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2019CASS Concert Royal Conservatory The Hague, Germany Presentation of the audio/visual work 'Space As A Substance' at the CASS Concert (Composition, ArtScience, Sonology) at the Arnold Schönbergzaal of the Royal Conservatory in The Hague. www.facebook.com/CASSConcert/?fref=tag Solo
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2018Architecture, without Architecture Povvera Berlin, Germany The exhibition will showcase a selection of works I created in 2017 and 2018. It is supposed to give an insight to my current working process, inspired by two images making a strong impression on me. The design for a cabinet by the artist and scientist Bernard Palissy (1510 – ca. 1590) and the vision of the Super Surface by the florentine group of architects Superstudio (1966). The works shown are meant to be interpreted personally and to give impulse to one’s own imagination. There will be no final conclusions, but infinitive space for free exchange. www.facebook.com/events/278531296049211/ Solo
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2017Metaphysik der Architektur, Experiences of an architectur student Povvera Berlin, Germany I imagine I am in a metaphysical space. This space has no fixed dimensions. It exists and it does not exist. On the one hand, the sphere of architecture, On the other hand, the sphere of nature. They conduct a dialogue - they exchange information. I listen to them. alexanderjohannes.com/artistic-practice/ Solo
Projects
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2023
Annual Post-Annual Home Gallery Den Haag The Hague, Netherlands alexanderjohannes.com/home-gallery/past-exhibitions/annual-post-annual/ Exhibition With works by: Jan Huijben, Katherina Heil, Rik Möhlmann, Davide Ghelli Santuliana, Luis Alonso Sánchez & Alexander Johannes Heil at Home Gallery Den Haag curated by Alexander Johannes Heil more info see website.
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2023
Feedback Loop, vis à vis with Cathleen Owens Home Gallery Den Haag The Hague, Netherlands alexanderjohannes.com/home-gallery/past-exhibitions/feedback-loop/ Exhibition with Cathleen Owens at Home Gallery Den Haag curated by Alexander Johannes Heil more info see website.
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2023
Common Ground, vis à vis with Maria Chiara Ziosi Home Gallery Den Haag The Hague, Netherlands alexanderjohannes.com/home-gallery/past-exhibitions/common-ground/ Exhibition with Maria Chiara Ziosi at Home Gallery Den Haag curated by Alexander Johannes Heil more info see website.
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2022
Home Gallery home gallery The Hague, Netherlands homegallery.alexanderjohannes.com I have a small gallery within my home. Exhibitions of befriended artists take place here in an intimate atmosphere. Now and then, I will give insight into my artistic process. In the current exhibition, Werkschau 01/22, I am showcasing works and fragments related to my ongoing project, The Architecture of the City, the Architecture of the Forest. Here I investigate subtle analogies between the two spaces in a poetic manner. On display, waiting for you to play with, is a prototype of my installation Nightingale, A Collage of Subtle Feelings. Through photographs, sound, natural and artificial elements, I explore a subtle feeling, which I suspect leads to a connection between the city, architecture, scripture, and the forest. The home gallery can be visited by appointment. Please contact homegallery@alexanderjohannes.com
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2022
Magrathea, vis à vis with Jan Huijben Home Gallery Den Haag The Hague, Netherlands alexanderjohannes.com/home-gallery/past-exhibitions/magrathea/ Exhibition with Jan Huijben at Home Gallery Den Haag curated by Alexander Johannes Heil more info see website.
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2022
We Are Just Sitting In A Room, Drawing, Until The Walls Are Full, vis à vis with Katherina Heil & Rick Möhlmann Home Gallery Den Haag The Hague, Netherlands alexanderjohannes.com/home-gallery/past-exhibitions/we-are-sitting-in-a-room/ Exhibition with Katherina Heil & Rick Möhlmann at Home Gallery Den Haag curated by Alexander Johannes Heil more info see website.
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2022
The Shark of My Dreams, vis à vis with Davide Ghelli Santuliana Home Gallery Den Haag The Hague, Netherlands alexanderjohannes.com/home-gallery/past-exhibitions/the-shark-of-my-dreams/ Exhibition with Davide Ghelli Santuliana at Home Gallery Den Haag curated by Alexander Johannes Heil more info see website.
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2022
Game Over, vis à vis with Luis Alonso Sánchez Home Gallery Den Haag The Hague, Netherlands alexanderjohannes.com/home-gallery/past-exhibitions/game-over/ Exhibition with Luis Alonso Sánchez at Home Gallery Den Haag curated by Alexander Johannes Heil more info see website.
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2021
Sensory Threshold LAB 2022: HOLY GRID! Home Gallery Den Haag The Hague, Netherlands st-lab.katherinaheil.de/sensory-threshold-lab-2022-holy-grid/ During Sensory Threshold LAB 2022, HOLY GRID! at Billytown in The Hague, the participants were invited to create, enact, think and talk about grids of all imaginable manifestations. This can be the pavement of a sidewalk, the invisible grid of a computer-generated landscape, or a social grid.
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2021
Sensory Threshold LAB 2021 - Ohriversum De Fabriek Eindhoven, Netherlands st-lab.katherinaheil.de/sensory-threshold-lab-2021-ohriversum/ Sensory Threshold LAB 2021 - OHRIVERSUM A project initiated by Katherina Heil in collaboration with Alexander Heil and Rik Möhlmann at De Fabriek Eindhoven. ‘As a particle of the atmosphere is never lost, so sound is never lost. A strain of music or a simple tone will vibrate in the air forever and ever, decreasing according to a fixed ratio. The diffusion of the agitation extends in all directions, like the waves in a pool, but the ear is unable to detect it beyond a certain point. It is well known that some individuals can distinguish sounds which to others under precisely similar circumstances are wholly lost. Thus the fault is not in the sound itself, but in our organ of hearing, and a tone once in existence is always in existence.’ [Florence McLandburgh The Automaton Ear 1876] I am walking on the beach. The wind swirls around my body. The waves wash the shore, crashing onto the land in an endless phasing repetition, creating an oscillating swell of noise. I encounter a sea shell. I lift it towards my ear – a maze of sound reveals itself to me. We live immersed in a world of sound. However, most of the sounds are filtered out by the shape of our ear. With this project we want to include ourselves deeply within this world, which extends beyond our daily experience. And thus we began our intuitive search for the relations between the ear, its form, and the resulting sound experience. Eventually, all human ears are built using the same blueprint. Nevertheless, every ear is uniquely shaped like a fingerprint and thus influences our subjective acoustic experience of the world. One could say, that listening beings all together live in their subjective sonic worlds. Therefore, we invented the concept of the Ohriversum (German ‘Ear-verse’) in which the entirety of all listening beings establishes a spatial constellation of these individual worlds. ‘Ohriversum’ takes place as part of the ‘Sensory Threshold LAB’. A group of artists exploring the inaudible dimensions of our reality, forming new collaborations, narratives and metaphors. Katherina Heil, Alexander Heil, Rik Möhlmann, Sarah Rose Guitian Nederlof, Farzané Nouri, Gijsje Heemskerk, Kim David Bots.
International exchanges/Residencies
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2019Royal Academy for the Arts Caen, France International exchange workshop between the ArtScience Interfaculty Den Haag and the école supérieure d'arts & médias de Caen/Cherbourg. Development and presentation of the performance SONAR in colaboration with Rafael Fischer Dieskau. festival-interstice.net/2019
Publications
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2020SUBSTANZRAUM - A new approach to global space Book Self Published Alexander Johannes Heil The Hague, Netherlands shop.alexanderjohannes.com/product/substanzraum-a-new-approach-to-global-space An essay on my theory of Substanzraum, the Space of Substance. Paperback 12x15cm 49pages Excerpt/Introduction: This is the story of the invention of a new spatial concept that is analog to the dialectic of mold and cast. While looking into a vast natural scenery, our gaze is locating landmarks comprised of objects and frames to hold on to, to differentiate areas and to order the larger space with its hard to grasp entirety. Space itself is floating, or streaming between these landmarks. The global space is filled with actual substances traveling around the planet, shaping each other through time and gravity and thus shaping the space we live in. I call this conception of space Substanzraum, the space of substance.
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2017Metaphysics of Architecture - Expiriences of an architecture student. Book Self Published Alexander Johannes Heil Berlin, Germany shop.alexanderjohannes.com/product/metaphysics-of-architecture-experiences-of-an-architecture-student Essay and field study on the formal dialectics of nature and architecture. Alongside positions of various architects and thinkers of architectural formal expression and space, I am describing my first hand experiences of several spaces, architectural and natural alike. The text is accompanied by a series of black and white photographs. Paperback 12x15cm 57pages Exerpt/Introduction: Ainsi toute la Philosophie est comme un arbre, dont les racines sont la Métaphysique, le tronce est la Physique, et les branches qui sortent de ce tronce sont toutes les autres sciences. René Descartes From a letter to Abbé Claude Picot I wonder if this parable can be applied to architecture? Would the trunk of this tree represent nature? And would the branches represent the entirety of architecture, with all its different formal phenomena and stylistic expressions? If so, nature would not be the last link in this chain. There would exist something even deeper: the root, the metaphysic fundament, inherent in nature as well as in architecture, which nourishes the architecture by permeating nature.
reviews
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2021Some kind words about me and my work. Website Merel Boers, historian, linguist, and writer. The Hague, Netherlands alexanderjohannes.com/biography.html Don’t try to pin Alexander down, because he won’t pin you down, either. A dreamer, a traveler, a thinker, a seeker, Alexander tries to see behind the surface. To study and describe what he feels is there. This is the journey he will take you on; a journey as old as mankind.
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2020Graduation speach Website Taconis Stolk, Head of Department ArtScience Interfaculty The Hague, Netherlands alexanderjohannes.com/biography.html Architects tend to talk and write more that they build, because it takes an effort before you get the expensive assignment. As an architect, Alexander can write, no doubt. But what he learned the past years, and that’s how he used his studies perfectly, is how to listen. That fabulous fact made him change from seeing space as something to use at will into an entity to listen to and react to. Alexander might have become something of an anti-architect — someone who is not filling space with things, but embracing space to leave it, and emphasizing its existence as such. Alexander did not only initiate wonderful events-in-space during his studies, but he also re-worked them in a portfolio that does not only clarify his ideas in a consistent way, but also functions as a manifest towards how we could experience space as such.
Awards and grants
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2020Nominee ArtScience Department Award (master) Royal Aacademy of Arts, The Hague The Hague, Netherlands Nominees Masters Department Award ArtScience, Royal Academy of Art, Graduation Show 2020.
Secondary art-related activities
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2022 - 2022Teaching: "Panorama Class" at INSIDE Architecture (Royal Academy of Art and Royal Conservatory Den Haag). Activities: development of this one-week workshop, lecture, excursion, workshop, individual coaching.
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2021 - 2023Curator at Home Gallery, an art project space in the Hague
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2021 - 2021Teaching: "Panorama Class" at the ArtScience Interfaculty (Royal Academy of Art and Royal Conservatory Den Haag). Activities: development of this one-week workshop, lecture, excursion, workshop, individual coaching.
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2021 - 2021Development of my long-term teaching and research project: "Panorama Class" On-going
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2020 - 2020Teaching: "Tiny Perceptions/ The Miniature" together with Renske Maria van Dam at the ArtScience Interfaculty (Royal Academy of Art and Royal Conservatory Den Haag). Activities: Lecture, excursion, workshop, individual coaching.
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2020 - 2020A Tabletop for two Plantlovers - Design for a Marble countertop/barcounter. This design for a counter/bar table was created following design principles developed throughout my artistic practice.
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2018 - 2018Simsalabim - Design for a Temporary Guestroom. This design for an interior space in a bunker loft was created following design principles developed throughout my artistic practice.