Cem. A, Etienne Chambaud, Mira Dayal, Johannes Equizi, Ghislaine Leung, Tom Marioni, Estefana Romen Matesanz & Quay Quinn Wolf
Café Wednesday is the first in a series of weekly gatherings at Van Abbehuis, permanently restaging Tom Marioni’s (1937, US) The Act of Drinking Beer with Friends is the Highest Form of Art (1970–ongoing) in its Billiard room.
Marioni’s artistic practice is deeply shaped by the questions and conditions that gave rise to what we now call contemporary art – understood both as a social, cultural, and economic system, and as a set of conceptual artistic practices. His work merges everyday experience and social interaction with artistic form, diluting the distinctions between art and life.
At Van Abbehuis, The Act of Drinking Beer with Friends is the Highest Form of Art is permanently installed and restaged as Café Wednesdays – open when the Van Abbemuseum closes on Wednesdays and programmed in collaboration with local partners. Embedding this work in the local context highlights contemporary art as both a local and a global, interlinked phenomenon – one that evolves through a continuous feedback loop of dialogue, exchange, and shared experience. The work forms the setting and backdrop for a series of events and interventions that unfold throughout all the rooms of Van Abbehuis. During the exhibition, Marioni’s Out of Body Freehand Drawing, an aid to communication, and Self Portrait will be on view during the duration of the show.
Cem A. is an artist with a background in anthropology, known for running the art meme platform Freeze Magazine and for his site- specific installations. His practice explores virality, performativity, and collaboration. For Café Wednesday, he responds to the proximity between Van Abbehuis and the Van Abbemuseum by reactivating the building’s porch, installing Angry Peace Flag on the flagpole in front of the space.
Étienne Chambaud explores the relationships between matter, signs, and structures through works that question the limits of perception and knowledge. His practice, rooted in conceptual thinking, moves between sculpture, installation, film, and writing, often appropriating and reconfiguring objects and systems from natural history, philosophy, and science. His works function as thresholds of transformation, where distinctions between form and dissolution, meaning and loss, become blurred. Eight of his Instruction Pieces will guide the exhibition, including one specifying that a visitor must be spat on, and another that withholds key information from public view.
Mira Dayal is an artist, writer and editor based in New York. She produces systems of sculpture that often respond to a site’s architecture or history, involving subtle, laborious, and sometimes absurd uses of everyday materials. Her works critically reflect on changing technologies and push against the limits of language and image. Map will be installed indefinitely on the hallway floor of the exhibition space, making the entrance the only area with concrete flooring. The work references David Ireland’s Reconstruction of a Portion of the Sidewalk at 500 Capp Street, a piece documented and commissioned by Tom Marioni.
Johannes Equizi is a cross-disciplinary artist and researcher whose work questions and reimagines how humans inhabit environments and form societies. His interests span emancipation, participatory collective processes, storytelling, and speculative thinking. Combining mediums from writing and welding to performance and coding, his practice emphasises learning by doing and mutual sharing. Equizi will present Portal in the garden of the Van Abbehuis.
Ghislaine Leung is a British conceptual artist whose practice employs score-based instructions to radically redistribute and redefine the terms of artistic production. For Leung, limitations – whether personal, institutional, or systemic – become tools for instituting differently. Her score Monitors will record various events throughout the exhibition, live broadcasting them to another space where a radio show is conducted. The score functions both as witness and as a structural element within the exhibition. Visitors may choose whether to observe the live event or its transmission; the recordings will not be archived.
Tom Marioni, namegiver to the exhibition, is an American artist and educator, known for his conceptual artwork.
Estéfana Román Matesanz creates sculptures understood as forms of expanded drawing. Working with recycled materials, she focuses on the traces these materials draw in space, the hollow parts of her constructions, and the colours of the fabrics used. On view will be a newly produced site-specific work, contextualised for the basement rave in collaboration with Melting Pot Collective.
Quay Quinn Wolf is a sculptor based in Brooklyn, New York. His work considers the meaning of objects and recontextualises them through the lens of labour and memory, exploring how physical effort and ephemerality shape experience. For Café Wednesday, he presents I’m Evaporating Into Something Weightless (do not refresh) as an installation within the framework of the local Blueberry Collective.
Bilderdijklaan 19
5611 NG Eindhoven
www.vanabbehuis.nl
Open
Thu–Sun 13:00–17:00
29 Oct, 19:00
Opening event with Blueberry Collective, DVR Collective, The Book Lovers M HKA, Melting Pot Collective, Dance Arts in Context Fontys
31 Oct
Villa Volta
Halloween Workshop
1 & 2 Nov
Fundraiser Weekender in collaboration with The Wave Eindhoven, Palestine Café, Tatreez Language, Freedom Library, BDS Netherlands, We for Gaza, and Revolting Press. A two-day fundraiser was organized featuring a variety of activities: screenings, an auction, performances, and embroidery workshops.
29 Oct, 19:00
Opening event with Blueberry Collective, DVR Collective, The Book Lovers M HKA, Melting Pot Collective, Dance Arts in Context Fontys
31 Oct
Villa Volta
Halloween Workshop
1 & 2 Nov
Fundraiser Weekender in collaboration with The Wave Eindhoven, Palestine Café, Tatreez Language, Freedom Library, BDS Netherlands, We for Gaza, and Revolting Press. A two-day fundraiser was organized featuring a variety of activities: screenings, an auction, performances, and embroidery workshops.
Café Wednesday is the first in a series of weekly gatherings at Van Abbehuis, permanently restaging Tom Marioni’s (1937, US) The Act of Drinking Beer with Friends is the Highest Form of Art (1970–ongoing) in its Billiard room.
Marioni’s artistic practice is deeply shaped by the questions and conditions that gave rise to what we now call contemporary art – understood both as a social, cultural, and economic system, and as a set of conceptual artistic practices. His work merges everyday experience and social interaction with artistic form, diluting the distinctions between art and life.
At Van Abbehuis, The Act of Drinking Beer with Friends is the Highest Form of Art is permanently installed and restaged as Café Wednesdays – open when the Van Abbemuseum closes on Wednesdays and programmed in collaboration with local partners. Embedding this work in the local context highlights contemporary art as both a local and a global, interlinked phenomenon – one that evolves through a continuous feedback loop of dialogue, exchange, and shared experience. The work forms the setting and backdrop for a series of events and interventions that unfold throughout all the rooms of Van Abbehuis. During the exhibition, Marioni’s Out of Body Freehand Drawing, an aid to communication, and Self Portrait will be on view during the duration of the show.
Cem A. is an artist with a background in anthropology, known for running the art meme platform Freeze Magazine and for his site- specific installations. His practice explores virality, performativity, and collaboration. For Café Wednesday, he responds to the proximity between Van Abbehuis and the Van Abbemuseum by reactivating the building’s porch, installing Angry Peace Flag on the flagpole in front of the space.
Étienne Chambaud explores the relationships between matter, signs, and structures through works that question the limits of perception and knowledge. His practice, rooted in conceptual thinking, moves between sculpture, installation, film, and writing, often appropriating and reconfiguring objects and systems from natural history, philosophy, and science. His works function as thresholds of transformation, where distinctions between form and dissolution, meaning and loss, become blurred. Eight of his Instruction Pieces will guide the exhibition, including one specifying that a visitor must be spat on, and another that withholds key information from public view.
Mira Dayal is an artist, writer and editor based in New York. She produces systems of sculpture that often respond to a site’s architecture or history, involving subtle, laborious, and sometimes absurd uses of everyday materials. Her works critically reflect on changing technologies and push against the limits of language and image. Map will be installed indefinitely on the hallway floor of the exhibition space, making the entrance the only area with concrete flooring. The work references David Ireland’s Reconstruction of a Portion of the Sidewalk at 500 Capp Street, a piece documented and commissioned by Tom Marioni.
Johannes Equizi is a cross-disciplinary artist and researcher whose work questions and reimagines how humans inhabit environments and form societies. His interests span emancipation, participatory collective processes, storytelling, and speculative thinking. Combining mediums from writing and welding to performance and coding, his practice emphasises learning by doing and mutual sharing. Equizi will present Portal in the garden of the Van Abbehuis.
Ghislaine Leung is a British conceptual artist whose practice employs score-based instructions to radically redistribute and redefine the terms of artistic production. For Leung, limitations – whether personal, institutional, or systemic – become tools for instituting differently. Her score Monitors will record various events throughout the exhibition, live broadcasting them to another space where a radio show is conducted. The score functions both as witness and as a structural element within the exhibition. Visitors may choose whether to observe the live event or its transmission; the recordings will not be archived.
Tom Marioni, namegiver to the exhibition, is an American artist and educator, known for his conceptual artwork.
Estéfana Román Matesanz creates sculptures understood as forms of expanded drawing. Working with recycled materials, she focuses on the traces these materials draw in space, the hollow parts of her constructions, and the colours of the fabrics used. On view will be a newly produced site-specific work, contextualised for the basement rave in collaboration with Melting Pot Collective.
Quay Quinn Wolf is a sculptor based in Brooklyn, New York. His work considers the meaning of objects and recontextualises them through the lens of labour and memory, exploring how physical effort and ephemerality shape experience. For Café Wednesday, he presents I’m Evaporating Into Something Weightless (do not refresh) as an installation within the framework of the local Blueberry Collective.
Bilderdijklaan 19
5611 NG Eindhoven
www.vanabbehuis.nl
Open
Thu–Sun 13:00–17:00
