Exhibition
Fire (You don’t start from emotions)

For our residency program The Art Department conceptual artists Otto Kaan, Berend Otto (1985) and Guus Kaandorp (1986), spent the months of June and July 2015 in our project space hosting events and working towards an exhibition.

As their previous work shows, Otto Kaan often focus on how things come to be therefore their method also involves a lot of building: they have made conceptual photographic tools, scaffoldings, furniture, all documented in excellent photographs. For the Art Department residency, their starting point has been Italian designer Giorgetto Giugiaro and his endearing Fiat Panda.

With the rocks collected in Garessio Otto Kaan built cars in different shapes and sizes matching the different Fiat Panda models.

Awarded the title of Car Designer of the Century in 1999, Guigiaro has hundreds of designs to his name. In early June, Otto Kaan set out on a journey to Garessio, the birthplace of the Panda’s nestor, to collect ideas, images, and rocks. Once they were back in Amsterdam, they hosted the event Young (named after Fiat Panda Young), a joyous afternoon of circuit-building and toy-car-racing that lasted until dark.

Reflection screens made out of sun shades for cars.

The Fiat Panda has been the leading motif of their research. Otto Kaan reinterpreted the logo and the colors of Fiat Panda Dance by incorporating them in the design of the Subbacultcha July membership card. The exhibition, which closed on 31 July, was a multimedia installation containing sculptural objects, a video installation, a lightbox and reflective screens.

In the video installation the artists showed various experiments with the contours of the Fiat Panda interior.

The title of the exhibition You don’t start from emotions is a quote by designer Giugiaro, in answer to a question about his design practice.