Mat(tijs) Visser (born 1958 in

The Hague The Hague ( ; nl, Den Haag or ) is a list of cities in the Netherlands by province, city and municipalities of the Netherlands, municipality of the Netherlands, situated on the west coast facing the North Sea. The Hague is the country's ad ...

Netherlands ) , anthem = ( en, "William of Nassau") , image_map = , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Kingdom of the Netherlands , established_title = Before independence , established_date = Spanish Netherl ...

) studied architecture in Delft, the Netherlands and is since then an organiser of performances and art exhibitions. He was head of exhibitions at

Museum Kunst Palast The Kunstpalast, formerly Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf is an art museum in Düsseldorf. History The roots of the museum go back around 300 years. In 1932, the collection of the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf (Academy of Art) was housed in the Kunstm ...

Düsseldorf Düsseldorf ( , , ; often in English sources; Low Franconian and Ripuarian: ''Düsseldörp'' ; archaic nl, Dusseldorp ) is the capital city of North Rhine-Westphalia, the most populous state of Germany. It is the second-largest city in ...

for eight years (2001–08), curated historical exhibitions and is best known for his

Artempo ''Artempo: Where Time Becomes Art'' was an encyclopedic art exhibition created for the Palazzo Fortuny, Venice in 2007. It examined the relationship between art and time, and the power of display. The exhibition included variations of culture ...

exhibition at

Palazzo Fortuny Fortuny () is a surname of Catalan origin. It may refer to: * Diego Fortuny (born 1991), Argentine rugby union player * Enzo Fortuny (born 1981), Mexican voice actor * José Manuel Fortuny (1916–2005), Guatemalan Communist leader * Mariano Fort ...

in Venice. He was the founding director of the international

ZERO foundation Zero (usually styled as ZERO) was an artist group founded in the late 1950s in Düsseldorf by Heinz Mack and Otto Piene. Piene described it as "a zone of silence and of pure possibilities for a new beginning".Karen Rosenberg (August 21, 2014)Hai ...

in Düsseldorf from 2008 to 2017 and is a researcher at the Institute for Contemporary Archeology in Antwerp. As director fro
0-projects
he advises museums around the world on collection presentations.

Exhibitions

Mattijs Visser has been producing exhibitions and performances since 1984, with artists as

Ilya Kabakov Ilya Iosifovich Kabakov ( Russian: Илья́ Ио́сифович Кабако́в; born September 30, 1933), is a Russian–American conceptual artist, born in Dnipropetrovsk in what was then the Ukrainian SSR of the Soviet Union. He worke ...

Robert Mapplethorpe Robert Michael Mapplethorpe (; November 4, 1946 – March 9, 1989) was an American photographer, best known for his black-and-white photographs. His work featured an array of subjects, including celebrity portraits, male and female nudes, self-p ...

Helmut Newton Helmut Newton (born Helmut Neustädter; 31 October 192023 January 2004) was a German-Australian photographer. The ''The New York Times, New York Times'' described him as a "prolific, widely imitated fashion photographer whose provocative, erotic ...

Jan Fabre Jan Fabre (born 14 December 1958) is a Belgian multidisciplinary artist, playwright, stage director, choreographer and designer. Conviction for sexual assault and harassment In September 2018, twenty former members of Fabre's performing ar ...

, Robert Wilson,

Kimsooja Kimsooja (; born 1957) is a South Korean, multi-disciplinary conceptual artist based in New York, Paris, and Seoul. Her practice combines performance, film, photo, and site-specific installation using textile, light, and sound. Kimsooja's work i ...

Wim Delvoye Wim Delvoye (born 1965 in Wervik, West Flanders) is a Belgian neo-conceptual artist known for his inventive and often shocking projects. Much of his work is focused on the body. As the critic Robert Enright wrote in the art magazine ''Borde ...

Laurie Anderson Laurel Philips Anderson (born June 5, 1947), known as Laurie Anderson, is an American avant-garde artist, composer, musician, and film director whose work spans performance art, pop music, and multimedia projects. Initially trained in violin and ...

, El Anatsui,

Anish Kapoor Sir Anish Mikhail Kapoor (born 12 March 1954) is a British-Indian sculptor specializing in installation art and conceptual art. Born in Mumbai, Kapoor attended the elite all-boys Indian boarding school The Doon School, before moving to the UK ...

, Dragset and Elmgreen,

Tino Sehgal Tino is an Italian name or nickname, often a diminutive of the names Agostino, Costantino, Martino, Antonino, Valentino, Giustino, Sabatino, Faustino, and other names ending in -tino. Tino may refer to: People Given name * Tino Ausenda (191 ...

Spencer Tunick Spencer Tunick (born January 1, 1967) is an American photographer best known for organizing large-scale nude shoots. Since 1994, he has photographed over 75 human installations around the world. Life and career Spencer Tunick was born in Middle ...

and Carsten Höller. He organised for the

and the

Royal Academy of Art The Royal Academy of Arts (RA) is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly in London. Founded in 1768, it has a unique position as an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects. Its purpo ...

s London classical exhibitions as Bonjour Russia, masterworks from the four Russian Museums (2007). For Museum Kunst Palast the Late Works by

Andy Warhol Andy Warhol (; born Andrew Warhola Jr.; August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987) was an American visual artist, film director, and producer who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art. His works explore the relationsh ...

(2004),

Dubuffet Jean Philippe Arthur Dubuffet (31 July 1901 – 12 May 1985) was a French painter and sculptor. His idealistic approach to aesthetics embraced so-called "low art" and eschewed traditional standards of beauty in favor of what he believed to be a ...

and

Art Brut Art Brut are a Berlin-based English and German indie rock band. Their debut album, ''Bang Bang Rock & Roll'', was released on 30 May 2005, with its follow up, '' It's a Bit Complicated'', released on 25 June 2007. Named after French painter Je ...

, the travelling show Africa Remix (2005–07), the

Caravaggio Michelangelo Merisi (Michele Angelo Merigi or Amerighi) da Caravaggio, known as simply Caravaggio (, , ; 29 September 1571 – 18 July 1610), was an Italian painter active in Rome for most of his artistic life. During the final four years of hi ...

show (2006) and

Diana Diana most commonly refers to: * Diana (name), a given name (including a list of people with the name) * Diana (mythology), ancient Roman goddess of the hunt and wild animals; later associated with the Moon * Diana, Princess of Wales (1961–1997) ...

Actaeon Actaeon (; grc, Ἀκταίων ''Aktaion''), in Greek mythology, son of the priestly herdsman Aristaeus and Autonoe in Boeotia, was a famous Theban hero. Like Achilles in a later generation, he was trained by the centaur Chiron. He fell t ...

, a view on nudity. He curated the exhibition Slow Art / Slow Life (2005) in which contemporary and performance art met with classical art. For the Quadriennale Düsseldorf the international ZERO (2006) show. For the City of Venice he made the concept for the prize-winning exhibition

(2007) at the Venetian Palazzo Mariano Fortuny with the collection of

Axel Vervoordt Axel may refer to: People * Axel (name), all persons with the name Places * Axel, Netherlands, a town ** Capture of Axel, a battle at Axel in 1586 Arts, entertainment, media * ''Axel'', a 1988 short film by Nigel Wingrove * ''Axel'', a Cirqu ...

and the City of

Venice Venice ( ; it, Venezia ; vec, Venesia or ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto region. It is built on a group of 118 small islands that are separated by canals and linked by over 400 bridges. The isla ...

. For the ''

Nuit Blanche Nuit Blanche () (White Night) is an annual all-night or night-time arts festival of a city. A Nuit Blanche typically has museums, private and public art galleries, and other cultural institutions open and free of charge, with the centre of t ...

'' in Paris a large SKY-event with floating objects by

Otto Piene Otto Piene (pronounced PEE-nah, 18 April 1928 – 17 July 2014) was a German-American artist specializing in kinetic and technology-based art, often working collaboratively. He lived and worked in Düsseldorf, Germany; Cambridge, Massachusetts; a ...

. For Museum Kunst Palast he curated in 2009 an exhibition with accompanying publication for Marlene Dumas. 2009 he was co-curator for the

Moscow Biennale The Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art is one of the most important Russian cultural events and was founded in 2003. First Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art The First Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art (January 28 – February 28, 2005) ca ...

and for the

Venice Biennale The Venice Biennale (; it, La Biennale di Venezia) is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy by the Biennale Foundation. The biennale has been organised every year since 1895, which makes it the oldest of ...

he curated together with

Daniel Birnbaum Daniel Birnbaum is a Swedish art curator and an art critic. Since 2019, he has been director and curator of Acute Art in London, UK. Education Birnbaum studied at Stockholm University, Freie Universität Berlin in Germany and Columbia Univers ...

the large

Gutai The was a Japanese avant-garde artist group founded in the Hanshin region by young artists under the leadership of the painter Jirō Yoshihara in Ashiya, Japan, in 1954. The group, today one of the most internationally-recognized instances o ...

show at the Central Pavilion. His exhibition ZERO in NY at Sperone Westwater (2008) was nominated in 2009 by the

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, often referred to as The Guggenheim, is an art museum at 1071 Fifth Avenue on the corner of East 89th Street on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City. It is the permanent home of a continuously exp ...

NY as best gallery exhibition of the year 2008. For the ZERO foundation, he curated exhibitions with Norbert Kricke,

Jean Tinguely Jean Tinguely (22 May 1925 – 30 August 1991) was a Swiss sculptor best known for his kinetic art sculptural machines (known officially as Métamatics) that extended the Dada tradition into the later part of the 20th century. Tinguely's art ...

at the Tony Cragg Foundation Wuppertal, and Jef Verheyen and

ZERO 0 (zero) is a number representing an empty quantity. In place-value notation such as the Hindu–Arabic numeral system, 0 also serves as a placeholder numerical digit, which works by multiplying digits to the left of 0 by the radix, usu ...

friends at the Langen Foundation Neuss. 2013 The

Museum of Old and New Art The Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) is an art museum located within the Moorilla winery on the Berriedale peninsula in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia. It is the largest privately funded museum in the Southern Hemisphere. MONA houses ancient, m ...

in Tasmania invited him and Jean-Hubert Martin to organise the travelling show "Theater of the World. After receiving prices for best design and lighting, the show travelled from Hobart 2013 to Maison Rouge in Paris. For the Guggenheim New York, he conceived the large ZERO retrospective in 2015, which toured to the Gropiusbau Berlin, and the

Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam The Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (; Municipal Museum Amsterdam), colloquially known as the Stedelijk, is a museum for modern art, contemporary art, and design located in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

. For the Multimedia Art Museum in Moscow and the Sabancı Museum in Istanbul, he curated in 2016 a show with Heinz Mack, Gunther Uecker and Otto Piene. The 7th Biennale Socle du Monde (2017) in Herning Denmark was conceived by Mattijs Visser and curated by

Jean-Hubert Martin Jean-Hubert Martin () born on June 3, 1944 in Strasbourg, France, is a leading art historian, institution director, and curator of international exhibitions. Through his professional career, he contributed to expand what is considered as contempor ...

, Olivier Varenne and him selves. The MONA

invited 2018 Visser to curate an exhibition around Vibration in the sixties, with the international artists from the ZERO movement. The

United Nations The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be a centre for harmonizi ...

appointed Visser as curator for an exhibition to memorate the First World War.

Projects

With 0-projects Mattijs Visser focuses on projects with historical and contemporary art, with an international network of prominent writers, researchers, and producers. 0-projects is specialised in reconstructing ideas, installations, works, historical exhibitions, and has the "archeology's" ability to tell stories that reach beyond official or formal discourse. 0-projects works mainly for museums around the world, as the

in Hobart, the

Pushkin Museum The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts (russian: Музей изобразительных искусств имени А. С. Пушкина, abbreviated as ) is the largest museum of European art in Moscow, located in Volkhonka street, just oppo ...

in Moscow, and the

Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, ( Persian: موزه هنرهای معاصر تهران), also known as TMoCA, is among the largest art museums in Tehran and Iran. It has collections of more than 3,000 items that include 19th and 20th centur ...

Publications

* "Theatre of the World" exhibition catalog edited by Jean-Hubert Martin and Mattijs Visser published by the Museum of Old and New Art, with essays by Jean-Hubert Martin, David Walsh, Mattijs Visser * "Henk Peeters", exhibition catalog edited by Mattijs Visser and published by the Gemeentemuseum The Hague * "Nul = 0", exhibition catalog edited by Mattijs Visser and published by the Stedelijk Museum Schiedam / NAI uitgevers Rotterdam 2011, * “Gutai, painting with time and space”, exhibition catalog edited by Mattijs Visser and published by Museo Cantonale d'Arte Lugano, with essays by Ming Tiampo, Helen Westgeest, Atsuo Yamamoto and Mattijs Visser, Lugano 2010 * "Marlene Dumas / Magnetic Fields", exhibition catalog edited by Mattijs Visser and published by Museum Kunst Palast, Düsseldorf 2009 * “Making Worlds”, exhibition catalog 53rd International Art Exhibition, with essays by Daniel Birnbaum, Paolo Baratta and Mattijs Visser,

La Biennale di Venezia The Venice Biennale (; it, La Biennale di Venezia) is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy by the Biennale Foundation. The biennale has been organised every year since 1895, which makes it the oldest of ...

2009, * "Bonjour Russland", exhibition catalogue, published by Museum Kunst Palast/Palace Editions, Düsseldorf/St.Petersburg 2007, * “ZERO in NY“, exhibition catalog edited by Mattijs Visser, published by the ZERO foundation and Sperone Westwater, New York/Düsseldorf/Ghent 2008, * “Artempo, Where Time Becomes Art“, exhibition catalog published by Musei Civici Veneziani, with essays by Jean-Hubert Martin, Heinz Norbert Jocks, Massimo Cacciari, Giandomenico Romanelli and Mattijs Visser, MER Paper Kunsthalle Ghent 2007, * “ZERO, Internationale Künstler Avantgarde“, exhibition catalog published by Museum Kunst Palast and Cantz, with essays by Jean-Hubert Martin, Valerie Hilling, Catherine Millet and Mattijs Visser, Düsseldorf/Ostfildern 2006, * "Dubuffet & Art Brut", exhibition catalog published by La

Collection de l'art brut The Collection de l'art brut (literally "Collection of Raw Art"; sometimes referred to as "Musée de l'art brut") is a museum dedicated to outsider art located in Lausanne, Switzerland. See also * American Visionary Art Museum The American ...

Lausanne and 5Continents, with essays by Jean-Hubert Martin, Lucienne Peiry, Michel Thèvot and Mattijs Visser, Düsseldorf/Lausanne/Milano 2005, * “Laurie Anderson, The Record of Time“, exhibition catalog published by

, with essays by Thierry Raspail, Jean-Hubert Martin and Mattijs Visser, Düsseldorf 2003, * "Wim Delvoye, Skatalog", exhibition catalog published by

, edited by Mattijs Visser, Düsseldorf 2002, * "Jan Fabre, The Lime Twig Man", exhibition catalog published by Galerie der Stadt Stuttgart, edited by Johann-Karl Schmidt, Ursula Zeller and Tijs Visser, Stuttgart 1995, * ”Robert Mapplethorpe, The Power of Theatrical Madness“ published by the

Institute of Contemporary Arts The Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) is an artistic and cultural centre on The Mall in London, just off Trafalgar Square. Located within Nash House, part of Carlton House Terrace, near the Duke of York Steps and Admiralty Arch, the ICA ...

, London, designed and edited by Mattijs Visser, London 1968,

Membership

* Member Advisory Board, Institute for Contemporary Art and Science, Deventer (2017-) * Advisory Committee, 8th Socle du Monde Biennale, Herning (2017-) * Board Member, Institute for Contemporary Archeology, Antwerp (2018-) * Advisory Committee, Teheran Museum of Contemporary Art (2015-) * Advisory Committee, Walter Leblanc Foundation, Brussels (2009-) * Advisory Committee, Inamori Foundation, Kyoto (2008) * Advisory Committee, Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart (2008) * Member Steering Committee, Islamic Museum of Modern Art, Doha (2008) * Member Acquisition Committee, Museum Kunst Palast / Stadt Düsseldorf (2001–2008) * Advisory Committee, Prins Claus Award 2005 * Member Advisory Board, Fritschy-Prijs 2005 * Member Selection Committee, Biënnale Europea Arti Visive 2003, La Spezia * Member Advisory Board, vzw Janus, Antwerpen (1998–2001) * Member IKT (sinds 2001)

References

External links

ZERO projects
*

ZERO group In mathematics, a trivial group or zero group is a group consisting of a single element. All such groups are isomorphic, so one often speaks of the trivial group. The single element of the trivial group is the identity element and so it is usually ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Visser, Mattijs 1958 births Living people Dutch art curators Dutch art critics People from The Hague