Bas Jan Ader didn’t care much talking about his work: when asked to explain the significance behind the frequent inclusion of falls in his work, he simply replied “because gravity overpowers me.” Whereas the Dutch-born American conceptual artist’s falls in Westkapelle reference Modriaan and Neo Plasticism, other falls—films and photographs—encapsulate the vulnerability at the heart of his finite oeuvre.

The sense of departure is a recurrent theme, culminating in Ader’s last epic work, In Search of the Miraculous, in which the artist disappeared at sea while attempting a solo trans-Atlantic crossing—only his sailboat was recovered ten months later. The artist’s small body of work stresses the sense that it really had to mean something for it to be worthwhile. Fall 2, Amsterdam, filmed and photographed across the Reguliersgracht, shows the artist bicycling carefully down the seventeenth century Amsterdam street, flower bouquet in hand, suddenly losing balance before disappearing into the water with a large splash in all of thirteen seconds, ending the film abruptly.[1] Fall 2, Amsterdam foreshadows the artist’s mysterious vanishing: closure to an oeuvre that revolved around the risk of death and the myth of machismo.

Ader, born in Winschoten during the tumult of World War II to idealistic ministers of the Dutch Reformed Church, hitchhiked at age 19 to Morocco, where he signed on as a deckhand on a yacht headed for America. Continuing his art education in his adopted California, Ader desired to be considered an American artist in the groundbreaking exhibition Sonsbeek buiten de perken in Arnhem in 1972 where Fall 2, Amsterdam was first shown. Study for Fall 2, Amsterdam chronicles Ader’s celebrated film, depicting the artist disappearing into the water with a large splash. Conceived from a large series of vintage photographs, the present four film stills herald the artist’s intention of unequivocal disappearance.

[1] Bas Jan Ader, Fall 2, Amsterdam, 1970, 16mm film, 19 seconds, ed. of 3