Guido van der Werve’s creative work consists of films and videos of performances and actions, for which the artist – who has also completed musical training – often composes special soundtracks. His works deal with a wide range of cultural topics, although the artist always critically and sensitively questions their function as access to an experience of the world. His films are characterised by the artist’s own activities as a performer; he always appears as a protagonist in his works, often exposing himself to tremendous physical hardships and dangers, as in the video film „Number 8: Everything is going to be alright“, for example, in which van der Werve walks across frozen Finnish seas only a few metres in front of a huge icebreaker, or when he completes a 28-mile marathon from a New York gallery to the grave of composer Rachmaninov in order to lay a bouquet of camomile blossoms on it. These are filmic compositions that include lyrical and musical elements and deeply move the viewer with their wonderful, but equally melancholy images.
The exhibition „Emotional Poverty“ shows a selection of the artist’s recent works, including the documentation of van der Werve’s climb up Aconcagua, or „Effugio C, You’re always just half a day a way“, a 12-hour HD-video showing how the artist – wearing running gear – circled his house in the Finnish town of Hassi for twelve hours without interruption (2011).