From 5 February to 29 April 2012, the Stedelijk Museum Schiedam will present the exhibition entitled Sylvie Zijlmans and Hewald Jongenelis. The Present. The Elimination of Possibilities. The exhibition consists of five video presentations and a spatial work, in which the play and the perception of time fulfil a crucial role. Since their first joint exhibition in 1993, and in addition to their own individual work, Zijlmans and Jongenelis have been realizing joint projects related to dramatic events. Their work offers an imagination-boosting alternative to an often-complex and overwhelming reality.

Sylvie Zijlmans (Geertruidenberg, 1964) and Hewald Jongenelis (Etten-Leur, 1962) both attended the Akademie voor Beeldende Vorming (Academy of Fine Arts and Design) in Tilburg, after which Zijlmans was admitted to the Rijksakademie voor Beeldende Kunsten (State Academy of Fine Arts) in Amsterdam while Hewald Jongenelis went to De Ateliers ’63 in Haarlem. Both artists currently teach at the Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam, where they serve as a source of inspiration to many students. In 1999, the Stedelijk Museum Schiedam presented a solo exhibition of the work of Sylvie Zijlmans, after which the Museum purchased some work and received a donation. The Museum intends to continue to follow artists who are represented in the collection, and to exhibit new developments.

In The Present. The Elimination of Possibilities the artist duo show lucid films with elements from everyday life in a poetic ambience. They combine six autonomous artworks whose images and significance reflect and reinforce one another. In addition, they invite visitors themselves to become a part of the presentation. The invitation is easily accepted in The Dancehall (2011). Metres-high pictures of dancing people are projected on three walls. In a cacophony of beats, one cautiously moves a shoulder, while another dances with much more exuberant movements. Hundreds of people are dancing, each for his/her own pleasure, in neat rows and dressed in what looks like rather frumpy clothes from the 1960s, giving an agreeable Sunday-morning feeling. The clothes, produced by a hundred tailors from China, display a marvellous colour palette.

The work entitled The Fundamental Engine of Progress (2009-2012) is a central feature of the exhibition. This is a spatial installation of ten projections from one and the same film. In the film, father and son travel on foot or by Segway along the edge of a city. On their way, they stack loose blocks and boxes to create simple sculptures. Father and son are heavily clothed, they wear five or six suits on top of one another. We see colourful and precise stacks of textile and objects. The stacks are a recurring pictorial element in the exhibition; the stacking is a simple sculptural action, an action performed to remain in the present. During the trip, the destination is unimportant and the starting point is equally insignificant. Father and son soldier on, calm and harmonious in tangible intimacy.

Between the two exhibition halls, an explicitly enigmatic object hangs in the stairwell: a neon diabolo (The Present, 2012). It radiates white and red light, which goes on and off now and again. You may expect something like this at an amusement fair, but what is it doing here in an exhibition? The diabolo stands for the literal and the intuitive aspects of the presentation. In the middle of the two funnel shaped sections of the diabolo, there is the crucial centre as an element of the game of juggling with time. There, you are exactly between what is behind you and what is yet to come. The future comprises countless possibilities, but the circumstances in the present eliminate them until only one remains.