Guido van der Werve: Nummer Veertien, Home

19 May - 15 June 2020

Guido van der Werve: Nummer veertien, home

This online presentation features sixteen unique photographic stills derived from the artist’s 2012 film of the same title. Capturing a wide variety of moments in the work, ranging from the banal to the dramatic, each one of the photographs features an elegant composition and powerful emotion.

Nummer veertien, home, is presented collaboratively across three galleries' websites: GRIMM, LUHRING AUGUSTINE, and MONITOR.
Trailer: Nummer veertien, home

Guido van der Werve, Nummer veertien, home, 2012, 4K video, Edition of 8 plus 2 artist's proofs, Duration: 54 minutes
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Guido van der Werve, Nummer veertien, home [still 1b], 2012
Nummer veertien, home is a multilayered and complex film, the structure of which is based on that of a classical requiem: three movements and twelve acts. The film poetically interweaves tales of Alexander the Great, the death of Frédéric Chopin, and Van der Werve’s own personal narrative. Dominated by Van der Werve’s obsession with his idol Chopin, the overarching thread of the film is a documentation of the artist’s epic 1,000 mile triathlon, swimming, cycling, and running, to carry a cup of soil from Warsaw, where Chopin’s heart is preserved, to Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris, where his body is buried.
- Nummer veertien, home excerpt
- Nummer veertien, home [still 03A], 2012
"Abstracting my personal memories and experiences is a process that I always apply in my work. I try to make my work as open as possible by doing this; I abstract the narrative until only the mood is left. Mood is a medium that everybody can relate to and, more importantly, everyone has their own relationship to the mood. The artist stops being important."

– Guido van der Werve
The structure for the film is provided by the 12 sections of the haunting minor-key requiem composed by Van der Werve, performed by an orchestra and choir which surreally appear at various locations throughout the film. The sweep of stunning landscapes is the perfect complement to the score, giving a physical embodiment to the evident pathos and longing present in the music.

Van der Werve also wrote the libretto for the score, which is based on the artist’s diaries and memories, as well as the text of the reqium mass itself.

Pictured: Nummer veertien, home [still 12B], 2012
Nummer veertien, home libretto
The mood is one of melancholy and existential striving, leavened by a strong sense of the absurd. Physical endurance, man’s struggle with nature, the crossover between history and geography, and the romantic solitary ideal are all presented with Van der Werve’s typical surreal and deadpan sensibility.
Installation view, Nummer veertien, home, Unlimited at Art Basel, June 2014
- Guido van der Werve performing home, a requiem at MoMA PS1, Queens, New York, October 7, 2012
- Guido van der Werve performing home, a requiem at Art Basel Parcours, Switzerland, June 18, 2014
"When you write music, it's quite abstract, and quite subconscious in a way, and many times when you make scripts or art, some of the thought process is more verbal in a sense. That really helps you keep the film, or the ideas for the film at this more pure, abstract thought-level."

– Guido van der Werve
- Nummer veertien, home [still 03A], 2012
- Nummer veertien, home excerpt
Seeing Van der Werve push himself beyond comprehension, following his own inner Odyssey, haunted by incomplete histories, inconclusive futures, blind drive, and some ecstasy of sacrifice, brought me to a speechless standstill. This non narrative incantation brings to form a complex set of powerful feelings, memories, histories, mythologies. It isn't strictly art. Or film. Or a mutant Ironman triathlon. It's poetry.

– Jerry Saltz, "Triaesthete," New York Magazine, October 15, 2012
Available Works

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