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Nicola Bozzi
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A Mysterious Visit to Huberville
by Nicola Bozzi
Thomas Huber at Galerie Akinci
April 6th - May 18th
Posted
5/8/13
The Thomas Huber solo show at Akinci reminds me a little of the Atelier van Lieshout one at Grimm, which I reviewed here last December – if anything because they both revolve around the construction of an imaginary city. But while AVL's was a three-dimensional, all-encompassing experience, Huber's is more of an old-fashioned dip in metaphysical landscapes, à la de Chirico. The Zurich-born artist invites the viewer to visit his urban creation either through the contemplation of immersive paint... [more]
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There's a Snake in the Cobra Museum
by Nicola Bozzi
Michael Tedja at Cobra Museum
February 2nd - May 26th
Posted
4/11/13
Honestly, I've never been a big fan of Cobra and their brand of playful semi-figuration, although that is primarily due to me not really being a painting guy (to stay within the movement, I'd take one of Robert Jacobsen's primitivism-infused industrial artifacts over a Karel Appel painting any day). As geographically de-centered as the group of artists involved was (Copenhagen-Brussels-Amsterdam, hence the name), their legacy lives on in Amstelveen's Cobra Museum. And, it turns out, the movement... [more]
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Enclaves with double histories
by Nicola Bozzi
Elian Somers at Stedelijk Museum (Bureau Amsterdam)
February 16th - April 7th
Posted
2/26/13
The scraped urban aesthetics of the former Soviet bloc seem to be ubiquitous in contemporary art right now. I guess there's nothing quite like a pale concrete block standing against the sky to satisfy our taste for minimalism and tickle our romantic nerves at the same time. But in Elian Somers' work at SMBA wild greenery is perhaps even more prominent than the built environment.
In her Border Theories series, the Dutch photographer – and architecture graduate – depicts three Russian cities th... [more]
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Jackie O and the Missing Dimension
by Nicola Bozzi
Jan De Cock at Galerie Fons Welters
February 2nd - March 9th
Posted
2/13/13
The first time I encountered Jan De Cock's lacquered steel frames and wooden planks was at Repromotion, the artist's 2010 solo show at Galerie Fons Welters. I remember wandering across the gallery space for a while, looking not as much at the sculptures as through them, since they framed and expanded each other in an intricate game of perspectives and shapes. Such fractalization of the room intrigued me and, as I took several pictures, I grew further fascinated by my own reframing of De Cock's wo... [more]
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Unpacking the Slave City
by Nicola Bozzi
Atelier van Lieshout at GRIMM (FRANS HALSSTRAAT)
November 30th, 2012 - February 23rd
Posted
12/3/12
Coming across Atelier Van Lieshout is easy in this part of the world. From public installations to office furniture, the Rotterdam-based collective/studio founded in the mid-90s by Joep van Lieshout is ubiquitous. Unpolished and organic aesthetics mark AVL's designs, making their utopian pavilions a little sinister and their commercial tables quite quirky (not to mention expensive).
On the whole, the collective's production is more complex than its bleak yet playful sculptures and environments might... [more]
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Eternal Return at the End (and Beginning) of an Art Venue
by Nicola Bozzi
Bojan Šarčević, Thomas Bakker, PEDRO BARATEIRO, Melanie Bonajo, Mariana Castillo Deball, Heman Chong, Jonas Dahlberg, Koenraad Dedobbeleer, Gintaras Didžiapetris, Thea Djordjadze, Zoro Feigl, Hella Jongerius, Surasi Kusolwong, Runo Lagomarsino, Joris Lindhout, Goshka Macuga, Raimundas Malašauskas, Jankovics Marcell, Girolamo Marri, Onco Tattje, Bik van der Pol, Barbara Visser, Freek Wambacq at SMART Project Space
November 3rd, 2012 - December 30th, 2012
Posted
11/5/12
As a project space, SMART's goal has always been to involve artists at a deeper level than regular institutions. In the past couple of years, the Statements series has been bringing to Amsterdam internationally renowned artists like the Russian collective Chto Delat or Nathaniel Mellors, putting them in a curatorial position rather than merely presenting a retrospective of their work. From time to time, different guests have reached out for the participation of the audience, external actors, or othe... [more]
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Confrontational Cynicism
by Nicola Bozzi
Tu Hongtao (CN), Huang Jingyuan (CN), Jang Jongwan (KR), Wu Junyong (CN), Kim Kira (KR), Ma Liang (CN), Ye Linghan (CN), Lee Saehyun (KR), Sim Up (KR), Lee Yongbaek (KR), Ni Youyu (CN) at Nieuw Dakota
October 14th, 2012 - November 11th, 2012
Posted
10/22/12
Those who had the chance to peek into curator Yun Cheagab’s Korean Pavilion at the last Venice Biennale might have their memory triggered while visiting Cynical Resistance, Cheagab’s group show currently divided between Nieuw Dakota and Canvas International Art. Upon entering the venue in Amsterdam Noord, Lee Yongbaek's monumental Pieta installation, which featured prominently in the Biennale, is definitely an eye-catcher: two oversized mannequins stand in a plastic pose, one poised to punch an... [more]
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An Adventure of Inspired Solitude
by Nicola Bozzi
Emanuele Wiltsch Barberio, Giorgio Andreotta Calò at SMART Project Space
September 8th, 2012 - October 21st, 2012
Posted
10/8/12
Real experiences are hard to come by in art. I mean, it's not often you happen to properly, actually live something at an art show. Usually, though, you can tell where an experience is advertised by the queue outside. I remember waiting some forty-five minutes to visit James Turrell's white-clad, edge-free room at the last Venice Biennale. As soon as we stepped out, a couple – too lazy or too considerate to sit down themselves and crawl their way in – stopped me and my girlfriend and asked us... [more]
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Of art, politics, and imagination. An interview with Yael Bartana.
by Nicola Bozzi
2012-09-17
Amsterdam, Sep. 2012 - The past few years have brought a renewed relevance to politics in contemporary art, a necessary reflex of the cultural world to global economic and societal conditions from which it can no longer pretend to be independent. Activism is increasingly affecting the aesthetics of visual arts and, this summer, it literally colonized its institutions, when the latest Berlin Biennale populated the KunstWerke with protesters from the Occupy and Indignados movements. Even fairs li... [more]
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FatForm Presents: Present Forever
by Nicola Bozzi
Roi Alter, Jabu Arnell, Gijs Assmann, Daniela Bershan, Melanie Bonajo, Arno Coenen, Adam Colton, Bas de Boer, Maze de Boer, Matthijs de Bruijne, Esther de Graaf, Kaleb de Groot, Ad de Jong, Jacobien de Rooij, Ian de Ruiter, Koen Delaere, Bart Domburg, Gijs Frieling & Daan Frieling, lotte geeven, Jos Houweling, Bert Jacobs, Hamid el Kanbouhi, John Körmeling, Natasja Kensmil, Klaas Kloosterboer, Job Koelewijn, Jean Bernard Koeman, Krijn De Koning, Frank Koolen, George Korsmit, Maartje Korstanje, Axel Linderholm, Sebastian De Line, Erik Mattijssen, Rik Meijers, Sachi Miyachi, Aapo Nikkanen, Jonas Ohlsson, David Powell, Maarten Sleeuwits, Derk Thijs, Hans van den Ban, Sam Geer van der Klugt, Bonno van Doorn, Ab van Hanegem, Marijn van Kreij, Jana van Meerveld, Wouter Klein Velderman, Henk Visch, Ruchama Noorda & Gijsbert Wouter Wahl, Judith Witteman, Izaak Zwartjes at FATFORM
July 29th, 2012 - September 30th, 2012
Posted
9/10/12
Last time I was at the Kraaiennest metro stop, in the area of South East Amsterdam commonly referred to as the Bijlmer, it was a couple years ago. Just under the elevated metro railway, right in front of the Winkelcentrum, there was an outdoor market going on. At the time I was interviewing some of the shopkeepers at the mall, trying to understand how the Bijlmer Euro was working. The project was an experiment by UK artist Christian Nold and local cultural association Imagine IC, an RFID tag-powe... [more]
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Portrait of an American Town
by Nicola Bozzi
Muzi Quawson at Annet Gelink Gallery
June 30th, 2012 - August 4th, 2012
Posted
7/18/12
We've seen marginalized America before. We've had the chance to appreciate its nuances and its sharp contrasts, the poor yet soulful black communities and the star-spangled-banner-wearing white ones, with their drinking habits and skating rebel kids. We've seen the cool and the creepy, often guided by the glamorizing and at times surreal gaze of the Larry Clarks and Harmony Korines. Muzi Quawson's is a different type of look. For an outsider, the British artist and photographer achieves a surpri... [more]
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Minimal Myth
by Nicola Bozzi
Ben Akkerman, Carl Andre, Bernd & Hilla Becher, Larry Bell, Mel Bochner, Nicola Carrino, Marieta Chirulescu, CHRIS CORNISH, ad dekkers, Ger Van Elk, Dan Flavin, Lydia Gifford, Raphael Hefti, Martijn Hendriks, Nathan Hylden, Donald Judd, NICHOLAS KNIGHT, Sol LeWitt, Robert Mangold, Brice Marden, François Morellet, Robert Morris, Marc Nagtzaam, Kenneth Noland, Nick Oberthaler, Tomas Rajlich, Kilian Rüthemann, Jan Schoonhoven, Monika Sosnowska, Peter Struycken, Oscar Tuazon, Giuseppe Uncini, Ned Vena at Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen
June 2nd, 2012 - September 16th, 2012
Posted
7/1/12
Minimal art is to art what art is to things at large. Respected, but somehow standing out as a little too elitist, an easy way in the complexity of a larger universe. After the first round of sixties minimalism has been fully incorporated by institutions all over the world, even somebody who appreciates abstraction and is privy to art history might be caught frowning upon an industrially-manufactured monochromatic cube. Tackling minimal aesthetics today requires a little more sophistication than the faux n... [more]
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Yes, we’re open… but not much longer
by Nicola Bozzi
at Netherlands Media Art Institute - Montevideo/Time Based Arts
June 2nd, 2012 - September 30th, 2012
Posted
6/19/12
What's in a title? In this case, a lot. The group exhibition currently on show at NIMk is about openness, but it's also a statement of – precarious, endangered...in fact, doomed – existence. The fact that the show is up until “the end” is just another hint to a situation that the average Amsterdam gallery-goer should know by now: NIMk is shutting down. Yes, We're Open is going to be the last of an almost two decade-long series of adventures in media art, a honored tradition that, since the... [more]
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Shaking things up in Amsterdam
by Nicola Bozzi
Matthew Barney, Melanie Bonajo, Maja Borg, Spartacus Chetwynd, Alberto de Michele, Eric de Vroedt, Niko de Wit, James Ensor, Melanie Gilligan, Adriana Lara, Urs Lüthi, David Lloyd, Philip Metten, Helio Oiticica, Ugo Rondinone, Markus Selg, Discoteca Flaming Star, Berend Strik, Toshie Takeuchi, Wendelien van Oldenborgh, Tori Wrånes at de Appel Arts Centre
May 25th, 2012 - September 23rd, 2012
Posted
6/4/12
Amsterdam is experiencing quite a cultural shake up these months. NIMk sadly shutting down for the infamous funding cuts announced earlier this year, the new and ugly Stedelijk soon to open its glass doors (September 23), and now the new De Appel building on Prins Hendrikkade. The renowned art center, formerly sitting in the hip De Pijp neighborhood, is the second cultural institution to move its headquarters to the IJ area, after the Filmmuseum left Vondelpark for its new spaceship right behind C... [more]
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Emotional Marathon. An interview with Guido van der Werve.
by Nicola Bozzi
2012-05-06
Amsterdam, Apr. 2012 - I've liked Guido van der Werve's work since I saw his solo show at Galerie Juliette Jongma, Emotional Poverty (you can read the article here). I might have caught a glimpse of one of his videos before, but that was the first time I had the chance to actually delve into his poetics, to get a feel of how personal and yet simply engaging his art is. He works mainly between Amsterdam and Finland, even though (as we were exchanging e-mails for this interview) he travels to o... [more]
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Three Artists Walk Into a Bar…
by Nicola Bozzi
Haseeb Ahmed, Roi Alter, Yosuke Amemiya, Andreas Arndt, Marwa Lamia Arsanios, David Bernstein, Daniela Bershan, Fritz Bornstück, Clifford Borress, Mitchel Breed, Chad Burt, Jaiyoung Cho, Steven Chodoriwsky, Simeon Cieslinski, Valentina Desideri, Efrat Gal, Ceemin Golshan, Sergei Inja, Adrià Julià, Kroot Juurak, Hyemin Kim, Saebon Kim, Alexi Kukuljevic, Géraldine Longueville, Pernille Lonstrup, Aapo Nikkanen, Irene O’Callaghan, Joyce Overheul, Jurgis Paškevičius, Enrico Piras, Doris Prlic, Julia Reist, Nathania Rubin, Jeremiah Runnels, Miguel Peres dos Santos, Sarah Stein, Diego Tonus, Janneke van der Putten, Timmy van Zoelen, Amanda Wasielewski, Jeff Weber, Christoph Westermeier, Robert Wittendorp at de Appel Arts Centre
April 13th, 2012 - May 12th, 2012
Posted
4/24/12
It's at once easy and hard to write about Three Artists Walk Into a Bar… It's easy because the show is more of an experience, and as such it should be lived. At the opening, after having a quite satisfying aperitivo, guests were taken on a bierfiets for a stroll around the Pijp and the Museumplein. For those who don't know, a “beer bike” is one of those big vehicles where several people have to pedal at once in order to move, while at the same time being served large amounts of beer. You ca... [more]
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Exploring the Sideways
by Nicola Bozzi
Cy Twombly at Bozar - Palais des beaux-arts de Bruxelles
February 1st, 2012 - April 29th, 2012
Posted
4/15/12
I remember visiting a big retrospective in Milan, which featured lots of paintings and imagery by David Lynch. Clearly the usual haunted-sofa kind of vibe you would expect from such a show was there, but the raw stillness of those images was in sharp contrast with the artist's films. In the end, to me the highlight of the show was a series of rather amateurish photoshop distortions of old pictures, which – I remember – sort of clicked in my head with Inland Empire's digital aesthetics, definite... [more]
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Over-Trockeled by Collage
by Nicola Bozzi
Rosemarie Trockel at WIELS
February 18th, 2012 - May 27th, 2012
Posted
3/19/12
The first impression when entering the Rosemarie Trockel show at Wiels is rather unwelcoming. The opening room is almost entirely occupied by long brown panels that block the view to the next space. Instead of being religiously placed all around the pristine white walls of the ample exhibition space, the artworks – a series of collages the artist has been producing since 2004 – stand in sharp contrast with the horizontal panels on which they are arranged, almost recalling an announcement board. S... [more]
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A Bad Trip in the Vondelpark
by Nicola Bozzi
Steve McQueen at Vondelpark
March 7th, 2012 - March 25th, 2012
Posted
3/12/12
Many years ago, when I saw what Christo and Jeanne-Claude had done for Central Park in New York, I remember I was pretty disappointed. Those guys had wrapped up entire buildings before, so their Gates were a bit too small of an element for me to be impressed. As somebody who didn't get the chance to actually experience the installation, the most interesting feature to me was that saffron orange, in striking contrast with the park's greenery. But color is only one aspect of a public installation, so I wil... [more]
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In All Fairness: Dispatches from Art Rotterdam 2012, RAW, and Re:Rotterdam
by Nicola Bozzi
at Raw Art Fair
February 8th, 2012 - February 12th, 2012
Posted
2/13/12
When I hopped on the train from Amsterdam to Rotterdam yesterday, I promised myself I'd try and go to as many off events as I could. Thing is, I get anxious when I have to report on fairs per se. You need to make smart comments on who's hot and who's not, and to do so you need market notions and gallery knowledge beyond my personal capability and interest. To me, fairs are in essence all the same: they absorb the thrill of a day trip into hours of walking and standing in what is possibly the most... [more]
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In Rotterdam: Art Fairs and Off-Events
by Nicola Bozzi
at Art Rotterdam
February 9th, 2012 - February 12th, 2012
Posted
2/8/12
Art fairs are the perfect excuse to visit a city. Because, let's face it, those big cluttered pavilions can only be exciting for so many hours. Rotterdam - considered the gateway to Europe with its large port and bustling industry - is one of those cities you discover little by little, usually with the pretext of visiting this or that art venue. And, despite the spectacularly unattractive city center, the resulting picture portrays a place that, if unevenly fascinating, does have its perks when... [more]
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Eke Kriek: An Investigation
by Nicola Bozzi
Eke Kriek at C3 GALLERY
January 14th, 2012 - February 25th, 2012
Posted
1/22/12
Although Eke Kriek's resumé is still local, her inspiration comes from far away. After attending the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Den Haag, in 2009 her film Tokyo Blue Screen was chosen for 10 Years - The One Minutes at the Amersfoort Kunsthal. An Investigation is her second solo show at C3, and this time the images she captured come from Iceland and Norway. The Dutch artist is most fascinated with cold colors and open spaces, floating ice and wind-stricken beaches.
While in Japan she had been documenting the zen-infused r... [more]
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Louis De Cordier, Makeshift
by Nicola Bozzi
Louis De Cordier at Motive Gallery
January 15th, 2012 - March 3rd, 2012
Posted
1/22/12
At first sight, the wooden trunks displayed at Motive Gallery would seem like aboriginal art. But they're no post-colonial ready-mades, unlike those we've seen in Vincent Vulsma's show at SMBA this year, for example. Louis De Cordier's “dugouts”, instead, are hand-carved sculptures made by the artist himself, out of white pines that grow specifically in the Spanish Sierra Nevada, where he lives. These canoe-shaped artworks represent quite a change in De Cordier's work, which often favors syntheti... [more]
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Marianne Vierø, International Pastime
by Nicola Bozzi
Marianne Vierø at Ellen de Bruijne Projects
January 7th, 2012 - February 18th, 2012
Posted
1/15/12
Marianne Vierø's installations at De Bruijne are assemblages of tripods, electric cables, drawings, neon, and vegetables. There is a pattern in the way these bio-linguistic compositions are arranged, a sort of cybernetic order of color and shape that underlies their interactions. Photographs of potato cross-sections marked by geometric shapes are hung on the wall and the same figures echo on the gallery wall (Wall Stamps series), in colors that refer more or less directly to the vegetables sitt... [more]
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An Ocean of Lemonade (Or The Trouble of Living in Times of Fulfilled Utopias)
by Nicola Bozzi
Pierre Bismuth at SMART Project Space
November 27th, 2011 - February 5th, 2012
Posted
12/26/11
Pierre Bismuth's solo show in Amsterdam has a lengthy and quite self-explanatory title. Clearly, there is some irony to the artist's take on our tech-powered, creativity-infested age. We seem to be elated about mass-produced ideas, on a dumb - yet sophisticated - capitalistic high. We invest objects (and their creators, be them architects or artists) with powers that are supposed to heal our society. Or at least our individual, boring lives, anesthetized by an overstimulating flux of televised or crowd... [more]
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Materials and what they have to say: An interview with Wilfredo Prieto
by Nicola Bozzi
2011-12-24
Amsterdam, Dec. 2011 - Cuban-born, Barcelona-based artist Wilfredo Prieto likes language, but defies labels. He likes to present objects that occupy the gallery space discretely and often lie on the floor, either arranged, scattered, or in a puddle. There is definitely a contrast between the often lengthy titles of his pieces and their minimal appearance, but Prieto takes time making sure the materials can speak for themselves. The artist's work plays with the visitor's expectations, underwhelm... [more]
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Folkert de Jong, The Man from Delft
by Nicola Bozzi
Folkert de Jong at Galerie Fons Welters
November 26th, 2011 - January 14th, 2012
Posted
12/18/11
I felt a childish thrill while visiting Folkert de Jong's solo show. Due to their colorful and heterogeneous materiality his figures have a sort of sensual spontaneity, but at the same time they give off the mysterious appeal of tarot illustrations. The sad Harlequin, the saucy Dutch Lady, the clueless philosopher Diogenes, the juggling King of Water, the burlesque Queen of Coal. A creepy pantheon of vicious, dirty demigods, laden with ancient symbology and dripping with polyurethane foam. The Man... [more]
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Mick Peter, Tao Foam
by Nicola Bozzi
Mick Peter at GRIMM (KEIZERSGRACHT)
November 26th, 2011 - January 7th, 2012
Posted
12/18/11
Mick Peter likes to explore the painterly quality of sculpture, and the sculptural quality of painting. He illustrates his own illustrations, turning them from CD covers (that he makes for his friends, the band Socrates) to strange reproductions of three-dimensional paper figures. He creates images, transforms them into patterns, then uses them to build walls. Most of the pieces that constitute Tao Foam reference something the artist originally created in another form, material, or medium. The... [more]
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Karel Appel & Roberto Barni, Studio Toscane
by Nicola Bozzi
Karel Appel, Roberto Barni at Cobra Museum
October 1st, 2011 - January 15th, 2012
Posted
12/4/11
As a co-founder of the North European abstract expressionist avant-garde group that gives the CoBrA Museum its name, Karel Appel is definitely at home in Amstelveen. Richly featured in two out of three shows, if he was still around it wouldn't be a surprise to see the Amsterdam-born artist walking around in a dressing gown and slippers, with a cup of tea in his hand.
While the CoBrA group show on the ground floor covers a wide range of his paintings, especially focusing on the 40s-50s period, the S... [more]
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Guido van der Werve, Emotional Poverty
by Nicola Bozzi
Guido van der Werve at Galerie Juliètte Jongma
October 29th, 2011 - December 17th, 2011
Posted
11/14/11
Guido van der Werve's show is about depression, the draining feeling of exhaustion that strips a person of every purpose, reducing his or her existence to a mere intake of oxygen, the physical mechanism that keeps someone alive. Such automatic yet consuming routine is at the root of the cosmic boredom a depressed person is affected by, but it's also the key to keep that person moving through his ups and downs, the osmosis that inextricably connects an individual with the world on the outside.
Guido van der Werve treats depr... [more]
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