Heavy Metal Parking Lot

Exhibition Activities Artworks
Activities Artworks
During the twentieth century the car became inextricably linked to popular culture. It came to be associated with sexuality and a prop in the performance of hypermasculinity. The group exhibition Heavy Metal Parking Lot acknowledges the historical role of the car as phallic signifier whilst adopting it as a cipher through which human drives are explored. Responding to the original function of the venue as a Volkswagen Garage, Heavy Metal Parking Lot recasts the exhibition space as something between a parking-lot and scrapyard. This intergenerational group exhibition brings together the work of nine international artists and explores the aesthetic and conceptual potential of the car in contemporary art. Several of the works in the exhibition anthropomorphize cars in order to investigate emotional states such as failure, desire and fragility. With a particular focus on sculpture and painting, the exhibition includes multiple allusions to Pop Art and its vital legacy. The recent advent of self-driving technology combined with the environmental crisis is changing how we utilise and think about the car. We are now witnessing the emergence of a new dynamic in the relationship between humans and machines. In the face of these changes will the car remain a potent symbol of power, desire and escape? Curator: Pádraic E. Moore With work from Vanessa Disler, Melissa Gordon, Richard Hamilton, Xavier Mary, Olaf Mooij, Alan Phelan, Monika Stricker, Erik Thys, and Sam Venables.
11 Sep - 11 Jul 2020
Opening Heavy Metal Parking Lot

We start the new cultural season at Garage Rotterdam with the opening of the group exhibition Heavy Metal Parking Lot. On Friday 11 September, the second exhibition by curator Pádraic E. Moore opens. This exhibition focuses upon the aesthetic and conceptual potential of the car in contemporary art.

Due to the current situation, the opening will be a little different to what you are used to. We’ll work with time slots and advance registration is required.

You can register via info@garagerotterdam.nl. The timeslots are from 8 PM to 9.30 PM and from 9:00 PM to 10:30 PM.

Not feeling well? Please stay at home, we would love to welcome you another time!

11 Sep - 11 Jul 2020
11 Sep: 20:00
Garage Rotterdam
3 Oct 2020
Brandstof: Drive-In Saturday

This nocturnal edition of Brandstof consists of a collage of screenings and readings presented in response to Heavy Metal Parking Lot. Drive-In Saturday brings together contributions from artists, some of whom are local and some from further afield.

In this event we contemplate the car as cultural artefact and explore how it’s role has evolved since the 1950s when Roland Barthes optimistically described it as “the supreme creation of an era, conceived with passion by unknown artists, and consumed in image if not in usage by a whole population which appropriates them as a purely magical object”.

Drive-In Saturday focuses upon the car as symbol of speed, sex and death and is significantly informed by Crash, J. G. Ballard’s 1973 novel about ‘the perverse eroticism of the car-crash’.

Featuring Chris Petit, Alexandra Phillips, Dan Walwin and others.

RSVP via info@garagerotterdam.nl
Tickets: € 4,50

03 Oct: 20:00
Garage Rotterdam
6 Nov 2020
- Canceled - Natafelen: Dinner in the exhibition

We would like to invite you to a new edition of the art & dinner event Natafelen on Friday, November 6, 2020. This event marks the end of the exhibition Heavy Metal Parking Lot. We will also say goodbye to the visual artists whose work is exhibited. All the more reason to come and enjoy dinner surrounded by art at Garage Rotterdam.

06 Nov: 18:00
Garage Rotterdam