Dick El Demasiado: Amplify me to the moon bakery, 6 September - 25 October 2008

Dick Verdult (Eindhoven, 1954) grows up in Guatemala, Argentina, South Africa and France. He graduates in Paris in the seventies at Université Paris VIII Vincennes. In the eighties he makes his name as a film and television maker, both independently and for the VPRO. In the nineties he founded the Instituut voor Betaalbare Waanzin (Institute for Affordable Madness, IBW). As a result of a trip to Honduras with the IBW he comes up with the 'Festival of the Experimental Cumbias' (Festicumex, a festival for this non-existent kind of music). From 2001 Verdult has been working alone on this project and writes the fictive anthropological research La Pero Incesante Degradacion de las Cumbias Lunaticas (The Slow but Unavoidable Decline of the Cumbias Lunaticas) in which he set forth the history of the Moonstruck Cumbias and allows the various (so far fictive) artists such as El Padre Teresa, La Hygiena Gonzales and Dick El Demasiado to speak. In 2002 Verdult decides to make his appearance as Dick El Demasiado (Dick the Redundant/Dick Too Much) and in 2003 he releases his first CD. Since then Dick El Demasiado is a well-known and popular artist in amongst others Argentina, Colombia and Mexico and is spoken highly of for his music and texts. In 2006 Verdult organises a Festicumex festival in the Van Abbemuseum. In The Bakery we are displaying the 'Cumbia Lunatica' project in its full magnitude with a film of Verdult, with his drawings, videos, posters, publications and sculptures. This reveals not only the enormous scope of the Cumbia Lunaticas project but also Verdult's versatility as an artist. During the opening on 6 September there will be a short performance by Dick El Demasiado at 6 pm. Also, he will be performing during the Night of the Unexpected in Paradiso Amsterdam on 5 September, starts at 8.30 pm.