ArtBits: Atlantic Ocean Drive - Collectief Ondergrond // Vondelbunker, Amsterdam

Collectief Ondergrond is a project by three Amsterdam based artists (Nathalie Snel, Sebastian de Line and Michiel Hilbrink), it works as a platform to connect and make intersections between artists from different countries. Each exhibition project space and concept varies depending on the artists and it develops along the run.

Atlantic Ocean Drive is the latest project in which six artists based in Amsterdam, (Marcel Van Den Berg, Raphael Langmair, An Ngo, Ian de Ruiter, Sarah Verbeek, Felicia Von Zweigbergk & Mylou Org). Ricardo Alzati, a Mexican artist based in San Francisco and Carlos Alfonso, a Colombian Artist who was doing a residency in The Stichting Flat at the time of the exhibition.

They all came together in a post war Bunker in the Vondelpark, right in the centre of Amsterdam, in which they all worked in an attempt of making an in-site collective exhibition, where the space set the parameters to work and at the end create an amalgam where the limits between the pieces and who made them starts to vanish, and where all that matters is the whole.

It also included a couple of artist talks, moderated by Vincent Van Velsen where each artist had the chance to share more of their own work, experience and discuss issues which derived from the dialogue.

The exhibition opened on August 23rd and went until the 25th.

____________________________________________

It was very interesting and exciting to be an spectator when the exhibition was cooking, also because this time it was almost a social experiment, of placing 8 artists in a space ( well not just a sapce, but A bunker), who didn't knew each other before they got there. With time some tensions rise but also connections, in both the artists and their works.

It's like they where getting to know each other through art and the way each one of them produced and left a mark or a leading path in some cases for the rest to follow, destroy or complement.
This exhibition had the particularity of not having the figure of a curator, which leaves the artists with total freedom to explore, make mistakes, edit or change everything at the last minute, which also leads to different results. That is why this exhibition didn't look like anything I've seen, which is both refreshing, contrasting and a bit weird.