Number eight, nine, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, seventeen

Walking frozen waters in front of an icebreaker, undertaking a 1,000-mile triathlon from Warsaw to Paris, or standing on the North Pole for a full twenty-four hours—the films of Guido van der Werve (born 1977) are often driven by sheer physical stamina. Yet at the same time—and not without a good portion of dry wit—they convey striking and clear images for existential and universal feelings: longing, melancholy, isolation, the precarity of life. Van der Werve, a classically trained musician as well as a passionate athlete, always stars as the lead actor of his intricately composed films and often writes his own musical scores. This inaugural exhibition at Fluentum showcases the artist’s oeuvre through a selection of six works from his Numbers series.

Fluentum currently also supports the production of van der Werve’s new work Number eighteen—a poetic self-examination on how the artist’s inferiority complex and fear of death saved his life. In 2016, van der Werve had an accident while cycling through Berlin. He spent two months in a Berlin hospital fighting for his life. A development in a fast-forward followed. He could no longer do it alone, he had to rely on help from others.

Number eighteen is a personal and radically concrete attempt to deal with mankind’s eternal wish to escape death, furthering van der Werve’s earlier works shown in this exhibition.