Mat Visser (b. 1958, The Hague

The Hague

The Hague is the capital city of the province of South Holland in the Netherlands. With a population of 500,000 inhabitants , it is the third largest city of the Netherlands, after Amsterdam and Rotterdam...

, Netherlands

Netherlands

The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...

) is an organiser of art exhibitions and performances. He studied architecture in Delft

Delft

Delft is a city and municipality in the province of South Holland , the Netherlands. It is located between Rotterdam and The Hague....

, Holland, founded the Troubleyn theatre company in 1986 in Antwerp with Jan Fabre

Jan Fabre

Jan Fabre is a Belgian multidisciplinary artist, playwright, stage director, choreographer and designer.He studied at the Municipal Institute of Decorative Arts and the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp...

. and the Angelos Foundation (1992). He was Head of Exhibitions for eight years at the Museum Kunst Palast

Museum kunst palast

The Museum Kunstpalast is an art museum in Düsseldorf, Germany.- History :The Museum Kunst Palast was founded as Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf, a typical communal arts collection in Germany. The first exhibits were given by the popular regent Jan Wellem, Duke of Palatinate, and his wife Anna Maria Luisa...

 (2001–08) in Düsseldorf

Düsseldorf

Düsseldorf is the capital city of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and centre of the Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region.Düsseldorf is an important international business and financial centre and renowned for its fashion and trade fairs. Located centrally within the European Megalopolis, the...

 and is now Founding Director of the international ZERO foundation

ZERO foundation

The ZERO foundation is a German cultural institute, established in December 2008, with support of Düsseldorf-based ZERO artists, Heinz Mack, Otto Piene and Günther Uecker, and Museum Kunst Palast. It is funded by the state capital Düsseldorf...

.

Exhibitions

Mattijs Visser has been producing exhibitions and performances since 1984, with artists as Ilya Kabakov

Ilya Kabakov

Ilya Kabakov, Russian Илья́ Ио́сифович Кабако́в , is a Russian-American conceptual artist of Jewish descent, born in Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine. He worked for thirty years in Moscow, from the 1950s until the late 1980s. He now lives and works on Long Island...

, Robert Mapplethorpe

Robert Mapplethorpe

Robert Mapplethorpe was an American photographer, known for his large-scale, highly stylized black and white portraits, photos of flowers and nude men...

, Helmut Newton

Helmut Newton

Helmut Newton, born Helmut Neustädter was a German-Australian photographer. He was a "prolific, widely imitated fashion photographer whose provocative, erotically charged black-and-white photos were a mainstay of Vogue and other publications."-Early life:Newton was born in Berlin, the son of Klara...

, Jan Fabre

Jan Fabre

Jan Fabre is a Belgian multidisciplinary artist, playwright, stage director, choreographer and designer.He studied at the Municipal Institute of Decorative Arts and the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp...

, Robert Wilson, Sooja Kim, Wim Delvoye

Wim Delvoye

Wim Delvoye is a Belgian neo-conceptual artist known for his inventive and often shocking projects. Much of his work is focused on the body. He repeatedly links the attractive with the repulsive, creating work that holds within it inherent contradictions- one does not know whether to stare, be...

, Laurie Anderson

Laurie Anderson

Laura Phillips "Laurie" Anderson is an American experimental performance artist, composer and musician who plays violin and keyboards and sings in a variety of experimental music and art rock styles. Initially trained as a sculptor, Anderson did her first performance-art piece in the late 1960s...

, El Anatsui, Anish Kapoor

Anish Kapoor

Anish Kapoor CBE RA is a British sculptor of Indian birth. Born in Mumbai , Kapoor has lived and worked in London since the early 1970s when he moved to study art, first at the Hornsey College of Art and later at the Chelsea School of Art and Design.He represented Britain in the XLIV Venice...

, Dragset and Elmgreen, Tino Sehgal

Tino Sehgal

Tino Sehgal is a British-German artist based in Berlin. His works, which he calls "constructed situations", involve one or more people carrying out instructions conceived by the artist.-Early life and education:...

, Spencer Tunick

Spencer Tunick

Spencer Tunick is an American photographer. Tunick is best known for organizing large-scale nude shoots. Since 1994 he has photographed over 75 human installations around the world.-Biography:...

 and Carsten Höller. He organised for the Museum Kunst Palast

Museum kunst palast

The Museum Kunstpalast is an art museum in Düsseldorf, Germany.- History :The Museum Kunst Palast was founded as Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf, a typical communal arts collection in Germany. The first exhibits were given by the popular regent Jan Wellem, Duke of Palatinate, and his wife Anna Maria Luisa...

 and the Royal Academy of Arts London classical exhibitions as Bonjour Russia, masterworks from the four Russian Museums (2007). For Museum Kunst Palast the Late Works by Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol

Andrew Warhola , known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art...

 (2004), Dubuffet and Art Brut, the travelling show Africa Remix (2005–07), the Caravaggio

Caravaggio

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio was an Italian artist active in Rome, Naples, Malta, and Sicily between 1593 and 1610. His paintings, which combine a realistic observation of the human state, both physical and emotional, with a dramatic use of lighting, had a formative influence on the Baroque...

 show (2006) and Diana

Diana (mythology)

In Roman mythology, Diana was the goddess of the hunt and moon and birthing, being associated with wild animals and woodland, and having the power to talk to and control animals. She was equated with the Greek goddess Artemis, though she had an independent origin in Italy...

+Actaeon

Actaeon

Actaeon , in Greek mythology, son of the priestly herdsman Aristaeus and Autonoe in Boeotia, was a famous Theban hero. Like Achilles in a later generation, he was trained by the centaur Chiron....

, a view on nudity. He curated the exhibition Slow Art / Slow Life (2005) in which contemporary and performance art met with classical art. For the Quadriennale Düsseldorf the international ZERO (2006) show. For the City of Venice he made the concept for the prize-winning exhibition Artempo

Artempo

Artempo: Where Time Becomes Art was an encyclopedic art exhibition created for the Palazzo Fortuny, Venice in 2007. It examined the relationship between art and time, and the power of display....

 (2007) at the Venetian Palazzo Mariano Fortuny

Mariano Fortuny (designer)

Mariano Fortuny y Madrazo, , son of the painter Mariano Fortuny y Marsal, was a Spanish fashion designer who opened his couture house in 1906 and continued until 1946.- Life :...

 with the collection of Axel Vervoordt and the City of Venice

Venice

Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...

. For the Nuit Blanche

Nuit Blanche

Nuit Blanche is an annual all-night or night-time arts festival. A Nuit Blanche will typically have museums, private and public art galleries, and other cultural institutions open and free of charge, with the centre of the city itself being turned into a de facto art gallery, providing space for...

in Paris a large SKY-event with floating objects by Otto Piene

Otto Piene

Otto Piene is a German artist. He lives and works in Düsseldorf and Groton, Massachusetts.-Biography:...

. For Museum Kunst Palast he curated in 2009 an exhibition with accompanying publication for Marlene Dumas. 2009 he was co-curator for the Moscow Biennale

Moscow Biennale

The Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art is one of the most important Russian cultural events and was founded in 2003.- First Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art :...

  and for the Venice Biennale

Venice Biennale

The Venice Biennale is a major contemporary art exhibition that takes place once every two years in Venice, Italy. The Venice Film Festival is part of it. So too is the Venice Biennale of Architecture, which is held in even years...

 he curated together with Daniel Birnbaum

Daniel Birnbaum

Daniel Birnbaum is the director of the Moderna Museet, the museum of modern art in Stockholm.-Life and career:Birnbaum studied at the Stockholm University, the Freie Universität Berlin and Columbia University in New York. He obtained a Ph.D. from the Stockholm University in 1998. In 1998, he...

 the large Gutai show at the Central Pavilion. His exhibition ZERO in NY at Sperone Westwater (2008) was nominated in 2009 by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum is a well-known museum located on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City, United States. It is the permanent home to a renowned collection of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, early Modern, and contemporary art and also features special exhibitions...

 NY as best gallery exhibition of the year 2008. For the ZERO foundation he curated exhibitions with Norbert Kricke

Norbert Kricke

Norbert Kricke was a German sculptor.Born in Düsseldorf, Kricke was a student of Richard Scheibe and Hans Uhlmann at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Berlin. He started creating abstract sculptures from 1947, using wires and other materials associated with industry, such as steel, glass and...

, Jean Tinguely

Jean Tinguely

Jean Tinguely was a Swiss painter and sculptor. He is best known for his sculptural machines or kinetic art, in the Dada tradition; known officially as metamechanics...

 at the Tony Cragg

Tony Cragg

Tony Cragg is a British visual artist specialized in sculpture. He is currently the director of the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf.-Early life:Cragg was born in Liverpool in 1949...

 Foundation Wupertal, and Jef Verheyen and ZERO

Art movement

An art movement is a tendency or style in art with a specific common philosophy or goal, followed by a group of artists during a restricted period of time, or, at least, with the heyday of the movement defined within a number of years...

 friends at the Langen Foundation Neuss. Nul = 0 is the first large exhibition with the international ZERO group after the NUL65 exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam in 1965, organized in close collaboration with the Stedelijk Museum Schiedam and Nul artists Henk Peeters

Henk Peeters

Henk Peeters is a Dutch artist. He was part of the ZERO movement.Peeters studied Fine Art at the Koninklijke Academie voor Beeldende Kunsten in The Hague and taught from 1957 until 1972 at the Art Academy in Arnhem, the Netherlands.Together with other Dutch artists, such as Jan Henderikse, Armando...

.

Publications

• "Henk Peeters", exhibition catalog edited by Mattijs Visser and published by the Gemeentemuseum The Hague
• "Nul = 0", exhibition catalog edited by Mattijs Visser and published by the Stedelijk Museum Schiedam / NAI uitgevers Rotterdam 2011, ISBN 978-90-5662-838-3
• “Gutai, painting with time and space”, exhibition catalog edited by Mattijs Visser and published by Museo Cantonale d'Arte Lugano, with essays by Ming Tiampo, Helen Westgeest, Atsuo Yamamoto and Mattijs Visser, Lugano 2010
• "Marlene Dumas / Magnetic Fields", exhibition catalog edited by Mattijs Visser and published by Museum Kunst Palast, Düsseldorf 2009
• “Making Worlds”, exhibition catalog 53rd International Art Exhibition, with essays by Daniel Birnbaum, Paolo Baratta and Mattijs Visser, La Biennale di Venezia 2009, ISBN 978-88-317-9696
• "Bonjour Russland", exhibition catalogue, published by Museum Kunst Palast/Palace Editions, Düsseldorf/St.Petersburg 2007, ISBN 978-3-9809060-8-1
• “ZERO in NY“, exhibition catalog edited by Mattijs Visser, published by the ZERO foundation and Sperone Westwater, New York/Düsseldorf/Ghent 2008, ISBN 978-90-76979-73-1
• “Artempo, Where Time Becomes Art“, exhibition catalog published by Musei Civici Veneziani
  Musei Civici Veneziani
  The Fondazione Musei Civici Venezia brings together museums and collections of artistic and historical importance in Venice, Italy. It is responsible for providing various cultural services and, at an institutional level, for overseeing the conservation, study and promotion of the city’s vast...
  
  , with essays by Jean-Hubert Martin, Heinz Norbert Jocks, Massimo Cacciari, Giandomenico Romanelli and Mattijs Visser, MER Paper Kunsthalle Ghent 2007, ISBN 978-90-76979-47-2
• “ZERO, Internationale Künstler Avantgarde“, exhibition catalog published by Museum Kunst Palast and Cantz, with essays by Jean-Hubert Martin, Valerie Hilling, Catherine Millet and Mattijs Visser, Düsseldorf/Ostfildern 2006, ISBN 3-9809060-4-3
• "Dubuffet & Art Brut", exhibition catalog published by La Collection de L'Art Brut Lausanne and 5Continents, with essays by Jean-Hubert Martin, Lucienne Peiry, Michel Thèvot and Mattijs Visser, Düsseldorf/Lausanne/Milano 2005, ISBN 88-7439-226-5
• “Laurie Anderson, The Record of Time“, exhibition catalog published by Museum Kunst Palast
  Museum kunst palast
  The Museum Kunstpalast is an art museum in Düsseldorf, Germany.- History :The Museum Kunst Palast was founded as Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf, a typical communal arts collection in Germany. The first exhibits were given by the popular regent Jan Wellem, Duke of Palatinate, and his wife Anna Maria Luisa...
  
  , with essays by Thierry Raspail, Jean-Hubert Martin and Mattijs Visser, Düsseldorf 2003, ISBN 3-9808208-8-2
• "Wim Delvoye, Skatalog", exhibition catalog published by Museum Kunst Palast
  Museum kunst palast
  The Museum Kunstpalast is an art museum in Düsseldorf, Germany.- History :The Museum Kunst Palast was founded as Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf, a typical communal arts collection in Germany. The first exhibits were given by the popular regent Jan Wellem, Duke of Palatinate, and his wife Anna Maria Luisa...
  
  , edited by Mattijs Visser, Düsseldorf 2002, ISBN 3-9808208-0-7
• "Jan Fabre, The Lime Twig Man", exhibition catalog published by Galerie der Stadt Stuttgart, edited by Ursela Zeller and Tijs Visser, Stuttgart 1995, ISBN 3-89322-751-2
• ”Robert Mapplethorpe, The Power of Theatrical Madness“ published by the Institute of Contemporary Arts
  Institute of Contemporary Arts
  The Institute of Contemporary Arts is an artistic and cultural centre on The Mall in London, just off Trafalgar Square. It is located within Nash House, part of Carlton House Terrace, near the Duke of York Steps and Admiralty Arch...
  
  , London, designed and edited by Mattijs Visser, London 1968, ISBN 0-905263-90-1

Membership

• Advisory Committee, Walter Leblanc Foundation, Brussels (2009-)
• Advisory Committee, Inamori Foundation, Kyoto (2008)
• Advisory Committee, Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart (2008)
• Member Steering Committee, Islamic Museum of Modern Art, Doha (2008)
• Member Acquisition Committee, Museum Kunst Palast / Stadt Düsseldorf (2001–2008)
• Advisory Committee, Prins Claes Award 2005
• Member Advisory Board, Fritschy-Prijs 2005
• Member Selection Committee, Biënnale Europea Arti Visive 2003, La Spezia
• Member Advisory Board, vzw Janus, Antwerpen (1998–2001)
• Member IKT (sinds 2001)

External links

• ZERO foundation
• ZERO group