another
vacant
space.
The Mondrian Fan Club
June 2017
David Medalla and Adam Nankervis have been
performing specific actions related to the biography and legacy of Piet
Mondriaan since the early 1990's. Many of these have been documented in
short video works, created sometimes in collaboration with other artists
and at other times as an autonomous auteurist duo, with Medalla and
Nankervis sharing camera duties and performer roles respectively. These
more recent stripped down productions offer a particularly idiosyncratic
narrative to the viewer, which is both personal and surreal, touching
and bold. Somewhere between mini-saga and epic, these latest instalments
are part of the ongoing propulsion of their mysterious vision. We are
very pleased to offer this rare chance to view some of these works in
the context of a screening event.
History
The Mondrian Fan Club was founded by David Medalla and Adam Nankervis in New York City in 1992, being born of Medalla´s first propulsion of 'The Flying Mondrians' in 1991 with Medalla as founder and Nankervis as co-founder (telekinisthetically, Medalla then in NYC and Nankervis in Aarhus Denmark), establishing a collaboration between the two artists living and moving nomadically around the world, who, when meeting in different locals globally created, and continue to create collaborative performances and installations, drawings and photographic impromptus, in homage to the artist Piet Mondriaan.
Mondrian who lived in NYC, was the inspiration, and New York City´s back drop, where Medalla and Nankervis met at the Chelsea Hotel in the winter of 1990, inspired actions primararily in the city, and over time, Medalla and Nankervis created the individual letters pertaining to the names or specific locales within different cities where they would, and do meet, to create a letter, an airborne piece global grafitti, which eventually will complete the sentence Medalla and Nankervis have started to formulate since the exhibition, The Secret History of The Mondrian Club, Gee Street London 1994.
Given the ethereal nature of the actions of The Mondrian Fan Club, much is lost in archiving, both films, and images are scarce, but have now been searched and sorted to continue in creating the sentence created before the exhibition The Secret of History of the Mondrian Fan Club.
The Mondrian Fan Club, Medallla and Nankervis´s interventions travel time ans space, a literal stitch in time, and meet at specific junctures, which are captured for their ethereal position and action in time and place, and exhibited sparsely, in an invocation of the meeting points where the two artists have converged, and shared, and collaborated by inspiration of the environment in which they inhabit.
The Letter '"M" over Manhattan
It was a crystalline blue morning sky, those pale blue skies that etch Manhattan into perfect blocks and spikes of light and shadow, a 3D cut out post card horizon behind us as we drove by taxi to Brooklyn.
It was the morning David and I were driving to Cypress Hills Cemetery to commerate Piet Mondrians fiftieth anniversary, 1994, with Mondrians favourite flowers in hand, chrysanthemums, to lay at his grave side on a hill ,whose mount overlooked the long stretched profile of Manhattan across the Hudson. We had not reached our destination when, in an industrial back lot, the written letter "M" began being penciled, a stencil fume from a plane, all white in a cloudless sky over Broadway NYC. We asked the taxi driver to stop and clambered out. With a throw-away camera the taxi driver photographed us with the letter "M" writ large over the New York skyline, over Mondrians Broadway. This was the first in a series of actions of The Mondrian Fan Club, which was founded in 1992 in homage to the great artist. This, the first in our series of ongoing actions in what we call global graffitti,a gesture of stitching the ethereal, demarked by alphabetic letters in a performative action over space, place and time.
journal A.N 1995
vacant
space.
The Mondrian Fan Club
June 2017
 |
| Mondrian Fan Club Cypress Hills Cemetry 1994 |
History
Mondrian in Excelsis, David Medalla/ Adam Nankervis, impromptu Fire Island NY, 1992
The Mondrian Fan Club was founded by David Medalla and Adam Nankervis in New York City in 1992, being born of Medalla´s first propulsion of 'The Flying Mondrians' in 1991 with Medalla as founder and Nankervis as co-founder (telekinisthetically, Medalla then in NYC and Nankervis in Aarhus Denmark), establishing a collaboration between the two artists living and moving nomadically around the world, who, when meeting in different locals globally created, and continue to create collaborative performances and installations, drawings and photographic impromptus, in homage to the artist Piet Mondriaan.
Mondrian who lived in NYC, was the inspiration, and New York City´s back drop, where Medalla and Nankervis met at the Chelsea Hotel in the winter of 1990, inspired actions primararily in the city, and over time, Medalla and Nankervis created the individual letters pertaining to the names or specific locales within different cities where they would, and do meet, to create a letter, an airborne piece global grafitti, which eventually will complete the sentence Medalla and Nankervis have started to formulate since the exhibition, The Secret History of The Mondrian Club, Gee Street London 1994.
Given the ethereal nature of the actions of The Mondrian Fan Club, much is lost in archiving, both films, and images are scarce, but have now been searched and sorted to continue in creating the sentence created before the exhibition The Secret of History of the Mondrian Fan Club.
The Mondrian Fan Club, Medallla and Nankervis´s interventions travel time ans space, a literal stitch in time, and meet at specific junctures, which are captured for their ethereal position and action in time and place, and exhibited sparsely, in an invocation of the meeting points where the two artists have converged, and shared, and collaborated by inspiration of the environment in which they inhabit.
 |
| Mondrian Fan Club The Letter '"M" over Manhattan |
The Letter '"M" over Manhattan
It was a crystalline blue morning sky, those pale blue skies that etch Manhattan into perfect blocks and spikes of light and shadow, a 3D cut out post card horizon behind us as we drove by taxi to Brooklyn.
It was the morning David and I were driving to Cypress Hills Cemetery to commerate Piet Mondrians fiftieth anniversary, 1994, with Mondrians favourite flowers in hand, chrysanthemums, to lay at his grave side on a hill ,whose mount overlooked the long stretched profile of Manhattan across the Hudson. We had not reached our destination when, in an industrial back lot, the written letter "M" began being penciled, a stencil fume from a plane, all white in a cloudless sky over Broadway NYC. We asked the taxi driver to stop and clambered out. With a throw-away camera the taxi driver photographed us with the letter "M" writ large over the New York skyline, over Mondrians Broadway. This was the first in a series of actions of The Mondrian Fan Club, which was founded in 1992 in homage to the great artist. This, the first in our series of ongoing actions in what we call global graffitti,a gesture of stitching the ethereal, demarked by alphabetic letters in a performative action over space, place and time.
journal A.N 1995
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| Mondrian Fan Club David Medalla + Adam Nankervis Mayflower Barn: photo- Guy Brett 1994 |
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| Mondrian Fan Club Homage to Mondrian David Medalla and Adam Nankervis 1994 |
