As 2017 opens there is a sense that all bets are off—that it is time to roll the dice and keep a hand open to all possibilities. Perhaps this is all the more so in the Netherlands—in many ways the closest of the EU countries to Britain and perhaps facing its own democractic crisis with a fractious election ahead in mid-March. In a sense this is both the mood and the motive behind a new joint venture by six Amsterdam art galleries and their opening project, titled “Where do we go from here?” As far as gallery experiments go, the basic premise of trading in the art commodity remains unaffected. Nevertheless, within these limits something quite bold is taking place. This joint venture tries out a new, collectivized form of trading, possibly marking a turn towards locality within the art market and the cultural climate more broadly. The project takes the form of a synchronized exhibition, with works selected from the galleries’ represented artists and arranged by invited curator Alessandro Vincentelli (Curator of Exhibitions and Research, BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead). Hot on the heels of the evermore successful Amsterdam Art Weekend in November, “Where do we go from here?” …

Informed by the rather upsetting constellation that “the body is under full attack,” Falke Pisano’s installation at Amsterdam’s Ellen de Bruijne Projects continues along the path set out by her series of works entitled “Figures of Speech” (2005-2010). With figuration now appended to the video lecture-cum-abstract sculpture format, the work’s objective, however, basically remains the same: that of reiterating an act of speech through a sculptural construct, while simultaneously demonstrating the ineffectiveness and futility of this endeavor. In this case, the juxtaposition of Pisano’s trademark didactical projection with a room-wide twisted chain of black screens does the trick. While the video is a mishmash of historical trivia and abstract reasoning—interrupted by the occasional image and diagram—Pisano’s dark paravents mutely occupy the gallery. Guided through them by the artist’s monotone voice, a phenomenological presence is made to resonate within these walls—yet, obviously, full alignment between the spoken word and sculpture is never attained. The work’s alleged “repetition as reoccurrence or sameness” is inevitably obscured by the opacity of the sculpture and projected images respectively, stuck in the quagmire of a neo-Deleuzian utopia from the very beginning. While Pisano promises to transpose the abstract object into the concrete realm of language, this …