Issuu

DISTANT SUFFERING

hansovervliet.com

In loving memory of Dorgham Quraiqi In the early morning of March 18, 2025, our dear friend, the artist Dorgham Quraiqi - together with his entire family - was murdered in Shuja'iyya, in the southern quarter of Old City of Gaza by the zionazi apartheids State Israel. Over the last years his travelling cinema, his small swimming pools and his theatre shows, for a brief moment made many thousands of displaced children smile throughout the Strip. A wonderful and talented person is no more. We are in deep, deep mourning. May his soul rest in peace.

cover page Photo Courtesy of ©Giel Louws

hans overvliet curiositas@zeelandnet.nl www.hansovervliet.com

Make something. Find a use for it. AND / OR Invent a function. Find an object. One thing working one way Another thing working another way. One thing working different ways at different times. Take an object. Do something to it. Do something else to it. " " " " " " Jasper Johns 1965 | in Catalogue Raisonné of Drawing

the rage of the bullet | 1995 corten steel 3 mm, bee wax | 61 x 61 x 3 cm

DISTANT SUFFERING XXI | i.d. of a shared bullet

video of the time laps

When I take a seat in Hans Overvliet's studio, I receive the multiple I.D of a shared bullet. This bullet formed of ice, trapped in a small glass container, is the first exchange between me and Hans and emphasizes the active relationship between maker and receiver that is central to his practice. The melting bullet in my hand questions my position. Poetic but critical, this question conti-nues, even when the bullet, now melted into a layer of water, stands between the art books in my cupboard where it slowly dissolves into nothingness and thus escapes being reduced to an art object. Martha Jager, curator Vleeshal January 2023

Luxfer Open Space | Česká SkaliceCZE | June 11, 2022

Juxtapose Art Fair | AarhusDNK | August 20 – 22, 2021

ruimteCAESUUR / Studio44SWE | December 6, 2021 - January 7, 2022

CultuurCentrum BruggeBE | April 21 – May 29, 2022

Supermarket Art Fair | StockholmSWE | May 25 – May 29, 2022

Slipvallen | Långholmen | StockholmSWE | June 4 – 19, 2022

kunstverein bahnhof25 | KleveBRD | November 11 – December 3, 2023

Verbeke Foundation | KemzekeBE | November 17, 2024 – April 23, 2025

Material Mold ‘hot Bullet Shape Mode’ from Etsy, Hong Kong 061207 1 H14-03-020 1 PL191 129 02 187 A small bottles from Etsy, Hong Kong; High borosilicate glass, cork, volume: 85 oz (25ml), 90 mm x 20 mm; opening: about 13 mm Orange label with text DISTANT SUFFERING XXI | I.D. OF A SHARED BULLET www.hansovervliet.com Severin GB 8882 - fridge | Steel console 110 x 60 x 60 cm Time-laps video Production | special thanks to Willy van Houtum | research, implementation, production, primal time-lapse video ( Skalice, Czech Republic, 2021 ) Loek Overvliet | console fridge Jochem Weststrate | time-laps video and stills ( Vlissingen, 2024 ) Photos Willy van Houtum, Roman RejholdCZ, Rikard FåhraeusSE, Azumi OkabeJP, Ivan van de CapelleBE, Ruben HordijkNL/SE, Giel Louws, Dirk KnickhoffBRD, Sylvia Hubrouck, teja van hoften

Exhibition | special edition the Open Nights Festival | 9th - 19th October 2025 OFF ART-Stage Presences-group | Larissa - Central Greece the perfomance functioned as the opening act for the 10th edition

Financial support Supermarket Independent Art FairSweden: Mondrian Fund Luxfer OpenSpaceCzech Republic and Juxtapose Art FairDenmark: SBKM / Vleeshal SlipvillanSweden: Kulturrådet | Region StockholmSweden Kunstverein projektraum-bahnof25 | KleveGermany: SBKM / Vleeshal Open Nights Festival | OFF ART-Stage Presences-group LarissaGreece Next page: stills from a promo video on Facebook by the Festival

DISTANT SUFFERING XXI | i.d. of a shared bullet

produzentengalerie plan-d | Düsseldorf Work / material Mold ‘hot Bullet Shape Mode’ from Etsy, Hong Kong 061207 1 H14-03-020 1 PL191 129 02 187 A; small bottles from Etsy, Hong Kong; High borosilicate glass, cork, volume: 85 oz (25ml), 90 mm x 20 mm; opening: about 13 mm; Severin GB 8882 – fridge

Time-laps video Catalogue

produzentengalerie plan-d | Düsseldorf Peter Clouth & Sonja Tintelnot made the bullets and handed them out on the opening March 21 – April 19, 2026

DISTANT SUFFERING XXI

i.d. of a shared ice bullet Reflecting on the conversations during the slow melting of i.d. of a shared bullet, Adorno comes to mind. He too taught me to look at art in a layered, but above all, in a political way. At the roles of the art producer, the art consumer, and all entities that move in between, the ideological angles in art history, etc. All this of course within the economic paradigm of the ruling class. Adorno set me on the content of my artistic path with “Art is not a matter of pointing up alternatives but rather resisting, solely through artistic form, the course of the world, which continues to hold a pistol to the heads of human beings.”1

world, which continues to hold a pistol to the heads of human beings.”1 I also felt almost personally supported by him: Theodor Adorno perhaps came the closest to making the ultimate de-fence of l'art pour l'art by claiming that “art becomes social by its opposition to society, and it occupies this position only as autonomous art. It criticizes so-ciety by merely existing.”2 (italic h.o.) Back to the beautiful conversations during the melting. My artwork i.d. of a shared ice bullet consists of a frozen bullet in a small bottle provided with a cork and a label carrying the title. The bullet is from an AK-47 Kalashnikov. of

label carrying the title. The bullet is made with the aid of a mold resembling the cartridge case of an AK-47 Kalashnikov, the most massproduces assault rifle on the planet. The image of this gun is portrayed in many documentations of war. The bullet itself, one rarely sees. The horrific results on the other hand . . . Immediately after the little bottle with the frozen bullet leaves the freezer, the ‘decay’ starts: the bullet begins to melt. It melts from a metaphor of a life-threatening object – a bullet - into a life creating element: water. I presented i.d. of a shared ice bullet for e first time in June 2021 in Luxfer

I presented i.d. of a shared ice bulthe first time solo in June 2021 in Luxfer Open Space in Česká Skalice, the Czech Republic. As an opening session. During the Juxtapose Art Fair in Aarhus, Denmark, for the first time we – my wife Willy and I - handed people the artwork one on one. We let the melting decide about the time frame: it guided the con-versation almost like an hourglass. The people who thawed the bottle in their hands all became emotional after a very short time. First of all, they considered the work as beautiful and than – sometimes at a deep personal level – meaningful. Some wanted to stop the process by putting the bottle back into the fridge, others photographed the on-going process during our

by putting the bottle back into the fridge, others photographed the ongoing process during our conversation, some tried to minimize skin contact to slow down the melting process. Many lamented that the work confronted them with their own vulnerability in a way almost how Adorno was quoted by ByungChul Han in his Saving beauty: “We should return to the kind of beauty that makes us (…) in Theodor Adorno’s terms, realizing our own finitude.”3 In many cases, the conversation halfway down focused on the preliminary result: a small glass bottle with a label and a cork with a little water in it.

bottle with a label and a cork with a little water in it. The owner – apart from the artist himself – is actually the only one who has seen the artwork in an "original" state. The rest of the planet must trust that the "story" is based in reality, even in truth, that this water was once an ice bullet. So, the only “realistic” image is anchored in the owners memory as long as she / he / x remembers that. “Indeed, this escape from reality led to an experience which could (and did) become a powerful force invalidating the actual prevailing bourgeois values, namely by vailing bourgeois values,

One of the melted bullets accompanied Azumi Okabe to Niigata City, Japan.

On a personal level, the artwork also shows the physical dynamics of my physical present; me being 73 years old and survived cancer, be it with a lot of negative side effects. The vulnerability and transience of myself and others around me are quite realistic facts in my life. So part of the work of course is shaping my own finitude. An experience I share with all those wonrience I share with all those wonderful people me and

derful people me and me and Willy had the privilege to meet handing out the ice bullet under the watchful eye of Adorno . . . Courtesy photo 2022 ©Azumi Okabe

by shifting the locus of the individual’s realization from the domain of the performance principle and the inner resources of the human being: passion, imagination, conscience.”4

Theodor W. Adorno, “Commitment,” in Notes to Literature, Volume Two, ed. Rolf Tiedemann, (New York: Columbia UP, 1974) p. 80

Theodor W. Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, eds. Gretel Adorno and Rolf Tiedemann, (Minneapolis: U Minnesota P, 1997) p. 225 – p. 226

Byung-Chul Han, Saving Beauty, (Polity, 2018) p. 22 – p. 24

Herbert Marcuse, The Aesthetic Dimension: Toward a Critique of Marxist Aesthetics (Boston: Beacon, 1978) p. 4 – p. 5

entre acte

Wilfried Agricola De Cologne

DISTANT SUFFERING XXXX

i.d. of an artist's video portrait | 2024 utterly endlessly repurposed naive incantation gesture co-production Hans Overvliet & Jochem Weststrate the video

DISTANT SUFFERING XXXXV

i.d. of a shared gold-plated bullet triptych | studio, study 2025 gold plated ceramic bullet, silk roses, blue velvet, classic bell jar 50 cm Ø | 22 cm gold plated ceramic bullet, silk lilies, blue velvet, classic bell jar 50 cm Ø | 22 cm gold plated ceramic bullet, nest of a blue tit from our garden, unhatched egg, eggshell, blue velvet, classic bell jar 70 cm Ø | 30 cm three consoles 30 x 30 x 110 cm | matt white finish

DISTANT SUFFERING XXXXVI

i.d. of the shared tale of a bullet ( difference and repetition ) frame (120 x 180 cm) with 8 perforated sheets (40 x 60 cm), each with 150 holes filled with 1,200 bullets (113 mm x 15 mm Ø) casted with white porcelain plaster Toonbeeld | Verbeeldingsroute / Imagination Pathway 2025 July 5 – September 14, 2025 Museum ‘ING-gang’ | Stadhuisplein / Terneuzen thanks to Hein Verwer, Cor de Lange and Giel Louws

DISTANT SUFFERING XXXX

i.d. of an artist’s portrait special cut of the video selected in ‘Zeeland Film Day’ Film festival Film by the Sea, Flushing September 12 through September 21. As is tradition, all selected films were also screened during Zeeland Film Day on 20 September, the last Saturday of the festival, 2025. Photo’s next pages: Sylvia Hubruoch and Bo de Jong

Link to the (Dutch) festival version.

DISTANT SUFFERING LVII | i.d. of Herschel’s bullet

cyanotype on damask and handmade paper 350 gsm multiple / edition 25 + 25 + 5 A.P. | 2025 - 2026 in co creation with Bo de Jong All proceeds from this multiple will go to the HOPE Foundation, which works with professional artists to help traumatized children in the Gaza Strip.

experimenting in the studio

the videos of DISTANT SUFFERING XXI | i.d. of a shared bullet DISTANT SUFFERING XXXX | i.d. of an artist's video portrait were shown in the program of The New Museum of Networked Art

DISTANT SUFFERING XXXX

utterly endlessly repurposed naive incantation gesture

AIR BIEKORF | 10.0: ‘TIN’ April 10 - June 7 2026 curator Jan Verhaghe

synoptic words

Despite all the preparations, starting in 2022 - finding the ‘proper’ bullet, making the 3D prints from the ‘appropriate’ one, figuring out the right size, making the molds and starting to cast the bullets from porcelain plaster - I had no idea what I was going for. No idea on what I was working toward. Other than transforming the object ‘bullet’. A bit like the concept of my ice bullet. The first 120 bullets or so I just focused on the concentration of the making and - I hoped – on the direction. That went well until D. intu-itively noticed that merely the making of these bullets was the artwork in itself. From then on, things went awry. After all, if casting the porcelain plaster bullets was the work itself, where did that artwork end?

that artwork end? While sustained working on the series, things changed fundamentally in the Middle East: Hamas and affiliated groups on October 7 radically altered the resistance to Israel’s occupation of Gaza. As a result, Israel began a genocidal massacre of the Gaza population, i.e. also on my friends. Bullets, primarily designed to kill and wound, in this artwork are completely transformed from destructive to harmless objects in this context. Bullets from porcelain gypsum completely undermine their destructive poten-tial; placed in grave like rows, a transformation occurs from an object of violence to an object of reflection and memory. By ‘verwandeln’ the destructive element of the bullet into something fra-

ment of the bullet into something fragile, harmless, aesthetically pleasing, the now-appearing ob-ject reaches multiple layers of imagination. ject reaches multiple layers of imagination. Into the two directions I describe in the appen-dix on the next page, with the help of Deleuze and Bataille. Conversations with filmmaker Jochem Weststrate about this project revealed another personal layer. My art is very often composed of a multitude of variations on one form: 250+ cans with plaster keys, 136+ portraits of assassinated journalists, 3,000 images of clouds & explosions, destruction and sea-waves, 38+ “water” paintings, 1,570 casted bulletc, etc. this artist.

Gilles Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition is always present in the back of my mind . . . So in the end, the video that Jochem and I made, also became an autonomous video portrait of this visual artist. At the same time, by casting a number of these bullets every day, I hoped, compulsively – like an incantation - and against my better judgment, that the people I know, including many people I can call my friends, in Ukraine, Gaza, Yemen, the West-Bank, Israel, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, etc. would stay alive. Thus, the work and its possible purpose, apart from the making, legitimised itself within itself. Alas: against my better judgment.

Giel Louws | Performance | acryl op doek 15 x 21 cm | 2025

colophon

The financial support Vleeshal SBKM Middelburg

Where should we go after the last frontiers? Where should the birds fly after the last sky? Mahmoud Darwish ( 1941 – 2008 )

Back site still from the portrait video