Paul Beumer’s painterly practice oscillates freely between figuration and abstraction, but in the past few years gained a specific focus on the use of natural materials like indigo and barkcloth. Steering away from the conventions of the brush and canvas his works are made on a variation of loose textiles. He engages ink or chlorine and manual resist-dyeing techniques to produce abstract patterns that feel like faint memories of Western High Modernism.

Paul Beumer (1982) received his BFA from the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague after which he completed a two-year residency at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten in Amsterdam. For the past four years he has been working and living in China, Japan and Taiwan. Recent solo exhibitions include ‘New Seeds’ at 16/16 in Lagos, Nigeria, ’He wanted kisses, but all he got was analytical anecdotes and philosophic epigrams’ at Venue in Taipei, Taiwan, ‘The message of the flower is the flower’ at Dürst Britt & Mayhew, The Hague, Netherlands, ‘Paint Wide Mouth White’ at Qingyun International Art Centre in Beijing, China, ‘In the shade of the elms and willows, my friends drink until they are inspired’ at Goethe Pavillon, Palais Schardt in Weimar, Germany. He participated in major group exhibitions at Fries Museum in Leeuwarden, Museum Het Valkhof in Nijmegen, Museum Kranenburgh in Bergen, Museum De Paviljoens in Almere and the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague, The Netherlands.

Work by Beumer is held in private and public collections, including the AKZO Nobel Art Foundation, Amsterdam; The Academic Medical Centre Art Collection, Amsterdam; the Collection of the District Court of Law, Amsterdam; the Rattan Chadha Collection, Voorschoten, Netherlands.

Alex Farrar’s practice is based on the artistic use of the exhibition form, with a focus on solo-projects in a range of contexts. Through considered groupings of individual works, Farrar encourages lyrical narratives to emerge, creating spaces to consider the intimate, feelingful ways in which we embody social, political, environmental and economic realities. Alex explores making processes in complex relationship with form, often drawing directly from the ‘nervous body’ and involuntary emotional expressions such as sweating, trembling and nail biting.

Alex Farrar (born 1986, Yeadon, Leeds, UK) lives and works in Amsterdam and London. He studied at Leeds College of Art, UK, Leeds Metropolitan University, UK, Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Recent solo exhibitions have been held at SE8 Gallery, London, UK (2019); Bloc Projects, Sheffield, UK (2019); A Park is a Place for Strolling in Winter, Eindhoven, the Netherlands (2019); Dürst Britt & Mayhew, the Hague, the Netherlands (2019); Art Rotterdam, w/Dürst Britt & Mayhew, the Netherlands (2019); Onomatopee [w/Philippine Hoegen], Eindhoven, the Netherlands (2018); Unfair, Amsterdam, the Netherlands (2018); Arco Madrid, w/Dürst Britt & Mayhew, Madrid, Spain (2018); Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten, Amsterdam, the Netherlands (2016); de Appel, Amsterdam, the Netherlands (2016). Group exhibitions include ‘Walk&Talk 9.5’, São Miguel, Azores (2020); ‘Vèf Jaah’, Dürst Britt & Mayhew, The Hague, the Netherlands (2020); ‘Double Negative’, ChaShaMa, New York, USA (2019); ‘British Summer Time (BST)’, Copperfield, London, United Kingdom (2018); ‘Distant Constellations’, The Great Medical Disaster, Manchester, United Kingdom (2017); ‘Staging the Inhabitable’, Cultureel Centrum Fijnhout, Amsterdam, the Netherlands (2017). Both in 2014 and 2015 he won The Best Dutch Book Designs for two of his publications.

Renowned Dutch artist Willem Hussem (1900-1974) continually experimented and produced highly diverse works of art, including painting, drawing and sculpture. A constant aspiration towards simplicity and purity underlies his entire oeuvre. This aspiration is closely connected with his need for clear systems of thought. It was in Hegel’s philosophy and Zen Bhuddism that he found the intellectual basis for the universalistic outlook on the world that would determine his thought and work.

Throughout his life Hussem was in search of a manner of working that tied in with his philosophical views. In poetry, he found this in short lyrics, while in art he initially found it in a style that steered a middle path between expressionism and constructivism, and finally in geometrical abstraction.

In 1960 Willem Hussem represented The Netherlands at the Venice Biennial. During his lifetime he had solo exhibitions at Gemeentemuseum in Den Haag, Museum Het Princessehof in Leeuwarden and Stedelijk Museum in Schiedam and participated in major group exhibitions in Museum Boijmans van Beuningen in Rotterdam, Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven and Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. He also exhibited twice at the Carnegie International in Pittsburgh, US.

After Hussem’s death in 1974, the ‘Hussem Committee’, which consisted of influential artists, art historians and museum directors, kept his legacy alive. Retrospectives were mounted at Museum Boijmans van Beuningen in Rotterdam, Centraal Museum in Utrecht, Rijksmuseum Twenthe in Enschede, Museum Dordrecht and most recently at Museum Belvedere in Oranjewoud.

Hussem’s work is held in many private and public collections, including Centraal Museum, Utrecht, Gemeentemuseum, Den Haag, Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam and Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.

Interview about the estate of Willem Hussem (in Dutch)

Jacqueline de Jong (1939) was involved in European avant-garde networks in the 1960s, including the Gruppe SPUR and the politically engaged Situationist International movement. She is revered for founding, editing and publishing The Situationist Times, a magazine that appeared between 1962 and 1967. By now her publishing, painting and sculpture endeavours have spanned over five decades, in which motifs of eroticism, desire, violence and humour continue to recur. In her painterly practice she has effortlessly switched between different styles: from expressionist painting to new figuration and pop art.

In March 2019 Jacqueline de Jong was awarded the Prix AWARE for Outstanding Merit at the Ministry for Culture in Paris, France.

Recent solo exhibitions include ‘Pinball Wizard’ at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, a retrospective at Musée Les Abattoirs in Toulouse, Same Player Shoots Again! at Malmö Konsthall, Imagination à Rebours at Dürst Britt & Mayhew and Imaginary Disobedience at Château Shatto in Los Angeles. Recent group exhibitions include The Most Dangerous Game at Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin, Nightfall at Mendes Wood DM in Brussels, Defacement at The Club in Tokyo, Die Welt Als Labyrinth at MAMCO in Genève, From Calder to Koons, Jewels of Artists at Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, Section Littéraire at Kunsthalle Bern and The Avant Garde won’t give up: Cobra and its Legacy at Blum & Poe in Los Angeles.

Work by De Jong is held in private and public collections including Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Cobra Museum for Modern Art, Amstelveen; Museum Arnhem; Museum Jorn, Silkeborg; Lenbachhaus, Munich; Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, Oslo; Kunstmuseum Göteborg; MCCA Toronto; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. In 2011 De Jong’s entire archive from the 1960s was acquired by the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library of the Yale University in New Haven.

Interviews and features

Interview in Frieze magazine

Interview in L’Officiel Art magazine

Interview in Financieel Dagblad newspaper (Dutch)

Interview in Metropolis M magazine (Dutch)

Interview in NRC newspaper (Dutch)

Lennart Lahuis (NL, 1986) received his BFA from the Artez Institute of the Arts in Zwolle in 2011 and from 2011 to 2013 he was a resident at de Ateliers in Amsterdam. He recently concluded residencies at BANFF Centre for Arts and Creativity (CAN) and Morgan Conservatory, Cleveland, Ohio (US). Recent solo and duo exhibitions include ‘Constant Escapement’ at the Fries Museum in Leeuwarden, Netherlands; ‘Land Slides’ at the National Museum of Ceramics ‘Princessehof’ in Leeuwarden, Netherlands; a solo presentation at Art Brussels with Dürst Britt & Mayhew and ‘Dead Seconds’ with Willem Oorebeek at Shanaynay in Paris. Recent group exhibitions include ‘Burn It!’ at the Krefelder Kunstverein / Kunstverein Mönchengladbach / Weltkunstzimmer Düsseldorf, Germany, ‘Common Ground’ at the AKZO Nobel Art Foundation in Amsterdam and ‘On Paper’ at the Stedelijk Museum Schiedam.

Lahuis’ work is held in private and public collections, including the Fries Museum in Leeuwarden, Stedelijk Museum Schiedam, Akzo Nobel Art Foundation, and the collections of ING Bank and the Academic Medical Center (AMC) in Amsterdam. In 2015 Lahuis won the Royal Award for Contemporary Painting as well as the Piket Art Prize.

The work of Alexandre Lavet plays with the idea of emptiness, disappearance and erasure. Under the apparent homogeneity of exhibition spaces lie the details that mark the uniqueness and specificity of each place. It is these elements that Alexandre Lavet wants to bring to light, thereby making the viewer more aware of the environment surrounding him.

Alexandre Lavet (1988) received both his BFA and MFA from the École Supérieure d’Art in Clermont-Ferrand (France). Recent solo exhibitions include ‘Everyday, I don’t’ at CAC Passerelle in Brest, France, ’Learn from yesterday. Live for today. Look to tomorrow. Rest this afternoon’ at Deborah Bowmann in Brussels, ‘I would prefer not to’ at Galerie Paris-Beijing in Paris, and ‘La cigarette n’a pas le même goût au soleil’ at Dürst Britt & Mayhew. Recent group exhibitions include ‘Vision’ at Palais de Tokyo in Paris, ‘Run Run Run’ at Villa Arson in Nice, ‘(In)territories/rituals’ at TARS Gallery in Bangkok and ‘The Context’ at Museum Flehite in Amersfoort, Netherlands. His work is held in private and public collections, including the Lisser Art Museum in The Netherlands. Alexandre Lavet is living and working in Brussels.

The work of Joseph Montgomery has the structure and syntax of sculpture, but it simultaneously has all the trappings of painting: wood, canvas, various types of coating and paint. The blurring and confounding of classification lends it a strange sense of hybridity. Joseph Montgomery ’s expansion of abstract painting results in two distinctive types of painting: collages and shims.

Joseph Montgomery (1979, Northampton, MA, US) lives and works in New York. Recent solo exhibitions include Via degli Eremiti at CAR DRDE in Bologna, Rules for Coyote at Dürst Britt & Mayhew, DOLLS (with Sherrie Levine) at Paula Cooper Gallery, Heads, Calves at Laurel Gitlen, Doll Index at Peter Blum Gallery and Five Sets Five Reps at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA). His work was also shown in the seminal group exhibition Painter Painter at The Walker Art Centre in Minneapolis. Work by Montgomery is held in private and public collections, including the Centraal Museum Utrecht.

Raúl Ortega Ayala (1973) studied Painting at ‘La Esmeralda’ in Mexico City after which he traveled to the Glasgow School of Art for a Master in Fine Arts. During his master’s degree, he moved away from painting and veered his practice towards Anthropology and began working with the ethnographic method of ‘participant observation.’ Since then, Ortega Ayala has purposefully immersed himself for periods of one or two years in various different contexts such as the office world, food and gardening. This resulted in three different series, titled: ‘Bureaucratic Sonata, An Ethnography on Gardening, and Food for Thought’. He is currently exploring other methodologies used in History and Archaeology for an ongoing series ‘From the Pit of Etc.’ devoted to the concept of absence, trace, and iconoclasm. Raúl Ortega Ayala is currently living and working in Wellington, New Zealand.

Recent group exhibitions include ‘Stirring the Pot of Story’ at the Delfina Foundation in London, ‘Silent Light’ at Dürst Britt & Mayhew, ‘True Story’ at Proyectos Monclova in Mexico City and ‘Yes Naturally’ at the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag in The Hague. Solo exhibitions include ‘Living Remains’ at Stroom Den Haag and ‘Melting Pots’ at Rokeby Gallery in London. Work by Raúl Ortega Ayala is held in private and public collections, including the David Roberts Art Foundation, the AkzoNobel Art Foundation and the VandenBroek Foundation.

Pieter Paul Pothoven (1981) is a multimedia artist who engages with historical sites, artifacts and resources in order to mediate new relationships with the past, often based on the potential use value of these locations and objects in the present. He received his BFA at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam and his MFA at Parsons The New School for Design, New York. He was a fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center, Provincetown (US) and a resident at the Instituto Sacatar in Salvador, Brazil. In 2014 and 2015 he was a participant at the Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht.

Recent exhibitions with Pieter Paul Pothoven include Territorial Drift at Garage Rotterdam, Listen to the stones, think like a mountain at Tatjana Pieters, Ghent, Lapis Lazuli from Serr-I-Sang at PuntWG, Amsterdam, 11:59 at Hudson D. Walker Gallery, Provincetown and The Intelligence of Things at The Kitchen, New York. His writings have been published by De Internet Gids, Volume and by the International Center of Photography in collaboration with CCS Bard. Work by Pothoven is held in private and public collections, including the Fries Museum, Leeuwarden, Akzo Nobel Art Foundation, Amsterdam and the Van Lanschot Art Collection, The Hague.

Sybren Renema (1988) is active as an artist, writer and musician. After receiving his BFA from the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague, he became the youngest MFA student to ever enroll at the Glasgow School of Art. Sybren Renema is interested in the obscure corners of all forms of human discourse, with a particular liking for art, history, geographical exploration and the natural sciences. These different interests are often combined in the same work, highlighting an interest in unconventional forms of knowledge-production as well as a sense of the absurd and the grotesque.
 Recent solo exhibitions include The Harvest of Leisure at Cydonia, Dallas,  The Milk of Paradise at Dürst Britt & Mayhew, Pleasures of a Grave Desire at CCA Glasgow and Objective Onomatopoeia at the Glasgow Project Room. Work by Renema is held in private and public collections, including the AMC Collection, Amsterdam and the Fries Museum in Leeuwarden. In 2017 his work was on show in the Antarctic Pavilion as part of the Venice Biennial.

David Roth’s artistic practice forms a long-term research into the origins, processes and manifestations of painting. For Roth the process of making and the element of chance involved are as important to notice as the final visual outcome. Therefore a so called end product as for example a painted canvas and side products as for example a palette or a piece of cloth for cleaning brushes, have the same value for him. Every surface with marks and history of the process may turn up in his works.

Time and duration are important elements and the layering of materials from different periods within one work can either spark dissonance or renewal. Roth’s works continually play with concepts of construction and deconstruction as well as with the performative and sculptural potential painting can possess. This becomes very clear in a series of works called ‘Brain’, which seem to behave like sculptures, but nevertheless have all the trappings of a painting: a bearer (be it a canvas or pieces of cloth), colour, and even a wooden framework. The trestles which are supporting the loose painted textiles are in fact made of modificated stretcher bars.

David Roth (1985) graduated from the Academy of fine arts Vienna in the class of Daniel Richter. Recent solo and duo exhibitions include ‘An introduction to painting’ at Dürst Britt & Mayhew, ‘remember’ at New Jörg in Vienna, ‘Vogl/Roth’ at Skulpturinstitut in Vienna, ‘ça grésille, ça clignotte’ at le commissariat in Paris and ‘Orgy Now’ at Ve.sch in Vienna. Recent group exhibitions include ‘Stretch Release’ at Dürst Britt & Mayhew, ‘Vielfalt’ at Landesmuseum Burgenland, ‘Imago Mundi’ at Belvedere Winterpalais in Vienna and ‘Plus jamais seul’ at Standards in Rennes. Work by Roth is held in private and public collections including the Landesmuseum Burgenland and the Luciano Benetton collection. David Roth lives and works in Vienna, Austria.

Alejandra Venegas’ artistic practice bears witness to an intense relationship with the landscape, a contemporary dissolution of the barriers between culture and nature, figurative and abstract representation. Based in the mountains on the outskirts of Mexico City, Venegas establishes a dialogue with the traditional Chinese painting style Shan sui, that literally means ‘mountain’ and ‘water’, through an intuitive and spontaneous practice, imbued with the dynamism and bright palette of Mexican modern art. Intense colour and simple geometry abound: rivers and mountains, waterfalls and creeks, clouds and planets create serene and vivacious landscapes. Working with gouache and wax on carved native woods like ahuehuete, ciricote, and huanacaxtle Venegas’ works delicately hover on the boundaries between drawing, painting and sculpture.

Alejandra Venegas (1986, Mexico City) studied Visual and Plastic Arts at La Esmeralda in Mexico City. Recent solo exhibitions include “Timicho” at Dürst Britt & Mayhew, and “Cavar estanques y amontonar montañas” at Casa Santa Maria de Fundación Casa Wabi. Recent group exhibitions include “Luego, la forma” at Galeria GAM in Mexico City, “Quality Time” at Proxyco Gallery in New York, “Fuera de los muros entre los cuerpo” at Casa de la Cultura San Rafael in Mexico City, ”Courage! Near infra red” curated by Abraham Cruzvillegas at Galeria Rinomina in Paris and “Hacer una isla” with BWSMX at Ruberta in Los Angeles. In 2018 Venegas was a resident artist at Casa Wabi in Oaxaca. In 2014 she was selected for the XVI Biennial Rufino Tamayo and in 2016 for the Biennial UNAM of Visual Arts. In 2013 and 2015 she received the FONCA Jóvenes Creadores scholarship. Venegas lives and works in Mexico City.

Interview

Click to read an interview with Alejandra Venegas by Madelon van Schie.

Puck Verkade’s practice centers around moving image, installation and drawing. Delivered with humour and a distinct taste for the absurd, her videos and drawings tell stories from uncanny perspectives in which archetypal personas are reimagined to candidly expose the contradictions of human behaviour. Shifting between handcrafted stopmotion, low fi animation, green screen and direct to camera performance, her fast paced montages have the sensation of a moving collage; a dense juxtaposition of layered images and sounds composed into a cartoon reality.

Puck Verkade (1987) holds an MFA in Fine Art from Goldsmiths University, London, and a BFA from the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, the Netherlands. Verkade has exhibited amongst others at Zabludowicz Collection, London; Artissima, Turin; Schimmel Projects Art Centre, Dresden; Forde, Geneva; LISTE, Basel; ARCO Lisboa, Lisbon; SUNDAY, London; Berlin Feminist Film Festival, Berlin; LOOP, Barcelona and Gemeentemuseum Den Haag. In 2017-2018 she was resident artist at Sarabande The Lee Alexander McQueen Foundation in London. Verkade’s work is held in private and public collections, including the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Turin, the Zabludowicz Collection in London, the Servais family collection in Brussels, the EKARD Collection in Wassenaar and the AKZO Nobel Art Foundation in Amsterdam. She lives and works between London and Berlin.

Forthcoming shows include a solo exhibition at Wroclaw Contemporary Museum, Poland in 2021.

The strength that lies in simple and everyday objects is often the starting point for Wieske Wester’s work. These are images without masks that appeal by their lack of visual violence and spectacle, but are nevertheless characterized by a certain degree of ambiguity. Wester’s paintings and drawings depict the human desire for identity, yet are peppered with references to aggression and sexuality. Fruit, vegetables, fish and figures that hover between beast and man regularly pass in review. For Wester the physical act of painting and drawing is the most direct way to capture the fluidity and forcefulness of the human spirit.

Wieske Wester (1985, NL) obtained her BFA from the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague, after which she was selected for a two-year residency at De Ateliers in Amsterdam. In 2015 she graduated from the HISK in Ghent. In 2017 she was nominated for the Royal Prize for Contemporary Painting in Amsterdam. Her work has been shown internationally at various venues such as White Crypt in London and the 6th Moscow Biennale for Art. Recent projects include group exhibitions at Frans Hals Museum in Haarlem and CODA Museum in Apeldoorn, Netherlands and a duo show with Jacqueline de Jong at Dürst Britt & Mayhew. Wester’s work is held in private and public collections, including LAM in Lisse, Netherlands, Ahold collection Amsterdam and the Pedro Moraes Barbosa collection in Brazil.