Silence out loud

Eternal Value and Eternal Truth

During the preparations, Zwagerman wrote: “I have a number of artists on my wish list who will hopefully make Silence Out Loud an unavoidable exhibition. An exhibition that, in our times of cacophony and high-pitched sound, depicts the eternal value and, don’t be alarmed, the eternal truth of silence (…). And now I’ll keep my mouth shut. Soon something else will resound: Silence Out Loud.”

The Issue of Silence

The title refers to a quote by the American artist Robert Ryman, whose work is also on display in the exhibition: “I want to raise the issue of silence.” All the artists portray this theme in their own way; so many artists, so many forms of silence. Zwagerman said of this: “Silence is the absence of sound, of course. But that’s only the formal description. In our experience, silence is so much more than that (…). The world is never completely and utterly silent, and neither is Silence Out Loud.

Bergen

Joost Zwagerman (Alkmaar, 1963 – Haarlem, 2015) has written about visual art and spoken about it on television. He has never prepared such a large-scale exhibition before. He has a special bond with Bergen—partly thanks to art—that dates back to his youth in Alkmaar. There, in high school, he was introduced to the work of Lucebert, the poet and visual artist who lived in Bergen. Until then, he had seen Bergen as a walking village for his parents and grandparents. Suddenly, it transformed into “a magical place where representatives from that unrecognizable realm of literature and art had apparently entrenched themselves.” With this exhibition, Zwagerman returns to his roots.