out of order

Gyz La Rivière

4 February - 13 March 2022

In the exhibition out of order, artist Gyz La Rivière expresses the desire for human contact. A colourful and impressive installation of telephone cards represents the need for connection: just how many hours and minutes do they represent? Who spoke to whom about what during those conversations?

 

At OMI you can see thousands of telephone cards, from countries everywhere, with all sorts of images: from Catherine Deneuve to Van Gogh, from architecture to ads. The ‘picture paradise’ on the walls of OMI calls to mind Instagram avant la lettre, except without the selfies.

The slim telephone booth from 1995, the Sidonia, forms part of the installation, along with a miniature model of PTT booth by the architects Brinkman & Van der Vlugt from 1931. Both are on loan from the Houweling Telecom Museum in Rotterdam.

In the series Road to Nowhere, also on show at OMI, he presents (city) plans that consist of LEGO baseplates. There is nothing built on them and the road sections do not connect up, but that is precisely what stirs the fantasy. Together with a model of the site hut, designed by J.J.P. Oud for the Witte Dorp, you can see in it modernism itself, as well as La Rivière’s love of De Stijl.

Photography:

Ossip van Duijvenbode