On the occasion of the Festival Holaa! we are happy to announce a public interview with Jacqueline de Jong.

Katja Weitering, former artistic director of the Cobra Museum of Modern Art in Amstelveen, will talk to Jacqueline de Jong about her long and varied artistic practice, which is as powerful today as it was fifty years ago. What keeps her going, inspired and fired up?

Sunday 9 July, 2017

Time: 3 – 5 pm

Location: Dürst Britt & Mayhew, Van Limburg Stirumstraat 47, The Hague

Please RSVP: info@durstbrittmayhew.com

Dürst Britt & Mayhew is honoured to present Jacqueline de Jong‘s (born 1939, Hengelo, Netherlands) first solo exhibition at the gallery. De Jong is revered for founding, editing and publishing The Situationist Times in the 1960s. By now her publishing, painting and sculpture endeavours have spanned over five decades. The exhibition shows various paintings and pastels from the 1960s up to now, in which eroticism, desire, violence and humour are recurring motifs. Her longterm involvement and collaboration with Asger Jorn and the legacy of the Cobra movement shine through, but have never stifled the experimental nature of her artistic practice, which is as vital, provocative and contradictory as ever. Her most recent mixed media works for example start with black and white photographic images of potatoes which De Jong transforms into landscapes, animals or monsters, which have become so characteristic to her practice.

Recent solo exhibitions include ‘Imaginary Disobedience’ at Château Shatto in Los Angeles and ‘Potato Blues’ at onestar press in Paris. Recent group exhibitions include ‘Medusa: Jewellery and Taboos’ at Musée d’Art Moderne in Paris, ‘The Leftovers’ at Simon Lee Gallery in New York, ‘The Avant Garde won’t give up: Cobra and its legacy’ at Blum & Poe in Los Angeles and ‘Traces – 100 years Asger Jorn’ at Cobra Museum for Modern Art in Amstelveen. Her work is held in various museums and public collections including: Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Cobra Museum for Modern Art, Amstelveen; Museum Jorn, Silkeborg; Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, Oslo; Kunstmuseum Göteborg; Lenbachhaus, Munich; MCCA Toronto; Centre Pompidou, Paris.

Upcoming exhibitions include ‘Sie sagen wo Rauch ist, ist auch Feuer’ at Kunsthalle Bern and a solo presentation with Dürst Britt & Mayhew in the Back to the Future section of Artissima Turin.

Essay

Click to read a specially commissioned interview between Jacqueline de Jong and Margriet Schavemaker

Reviews and features

Villa Next Door by Albertus Pieters

Further reading

The Life and Times of Jacqueline de Jong, Frieze magazine, April 2017

Jacqueline de Jong speaks about the COBRA legacy, Art Basel | Salon

Jacqueline de Jong speaks about Paris 1968, Andere Tijden (in Dutch)

Jacqueline de Jong speaks about her life as an artist, De Groene (in Dutch)

The artists presented in ‘Stretch Release’ can all be qualified as painters. However they do not limit their painterly practice to the well trodden path of oil on a stretched rectangular canvas. They regularly prefer to take the canvas off of the stretcher and let painted fabrics behave of their own accord. Some produce their own fabrics and dye or paint on them, others expose their painted textiles to the natural elements. These are works that do not necessarily ask to be hung from a wall, but can just as well be placed as markers within the architecture of a given space. They subtly influence the viewers’ gaze and movements, without immediately turning into obvious sculptural interventions.

With: Mark Barrow & Sarah Parke, Paul Beumer, Koen Doodeman, Marije Gertenbach, Kristan Kennedy, David Roth, Alexis Teplin.

We would like to thank the following galleries for their kind cooperation: CAR DRDE, Elizabeth Dee, Fourteen30 Contemporary, Rento Brattinga galerie – Dudok De Groot.

Essay

Click to read a specially commissioned essay by Lynne van Rhijn

Reviews and features

Trendbeheer by Jeroen Bosch

Villa Next Door by Albertus Pieters

Hunted Projects

Image: © David Roth, landscape painting (Gaisberg), 2010, photo David Eisl.

The exhibited works by Alex Farrar, Lennart Lahuis and Alexandre Lavet focus on and play with various notions of emptiness, suspension and dislocation.

Alex Farrar’s (1986, UK) artistic practice concerns itself with biological remnants and dislocation. The biological remnants in question can be as commonplace as pieces of nails and eyelashes found in his studio. These human traces dislocated themselves from their original source and found an apparent end point in a certain space. This specific space however did not allow for natural perishment, as Farrar takes notice of the smallest particles surrounding him.

For Independent Brussels 2017 Dürst Britt & Mayhew is proud to present a solo exhibition with new works by American artist Joseph Montgomery.

The mainstay of Montgomery’s oeuvre consists of two different types of work. There are the minimalist, monochromatic shims on the one hand and the collages on the other. Both kind of works have the structure and syntax of sculpture, but they simultaneously have all the trappings of painting. This blurring and confounding of classification lends them a strange sense of hybridity.

For his collages Montgomery is basically attracted to the classical portrait format with which he creates layered abstract images, which are reminiscent of faces or muzzles. Since last year they mostly begin as self-portrait pencil sketches on paper, emphasizing a large nose and long hair and perhaps a gender fluidity. These are vectorized and assigned colours in the computer. Then they are printed on plastic with an emulsion that interacts with alcohol in order to be transferred onto canvas. Subsequently Montgomery chooses either to keep this ‘pigment transfer’ as is or add various other layers of paint, pastel or found materials.

Montgomery’s shim works are composed of a generative, readymade material, the 16 inches long, tapered wedges you can find in the lumber section of any DIY store. Rearranging them, assembling them, is another way of representing painting. Recently he started adding vegetation that the finds in the vicinity of his studio. The wedges also pop up in other series and media in the form of life-size sculptures and video-animations, hence becoming a returning motif.

Click to read ‘The Nose Job’, a specially commissioned interview with Joseph Montgomery by Sam Steverlynck.

Joseph Montgomery (1979, Northampton, MA, US) lives and works in New York. Recent solo exhibitions include ‘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, Netherlands.

Dürst Britt & Mayhew is delighted to present Mexican artist Raúl Ortega Ayala‘s first solo exhibition at the gallery.

Ortega Ayala will premiere his new videowork ‘The Zone’ which deals with the 30-kilometre radius uninhabited area in the Ukraine directly affected by the Chernobyl nuclear accident of 1986. For four years Ortega Ayala has been visiting this derelict territory to obtain footage for a film that seeks to resurface (through first hand accounts of witnesses) an unprecedented event in our history where man-made technology went wrong and rendered uninhabitable a vast area that includes entire cities and monumental structures. The footage was shot purposefully during different seasons (with and without the main characters) in order to constantly play with the visual narrative, with our perception of time and to illustrate the erratic behavior of memories.

‘The Zone’ forms part of Ortega Ayala’s current research project ‘From the Pit of Etc.’, which deploys methodologies used in History and Archaeology for an ongoing series devoted to the concept of absence, trace, and iconoclasm. The exhibition also contains various photographic images the artist shot while visiting the ghost town of Pripyat, which was founded on 4 February 1970 to serve the nearby Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant and had grown to a population of 49,360 by the time it was evacuated in 1986.

A different vein in Ortega Ayala’s current research project is constituted by a series of ‘paintings’, revealing images that are hidden under paintings from various museum collections. By obtaining permission to use x-rays the museums deploy for conservation or authentication purposes, Ortega Ayala manages to conjure up intriguing dichotomies, which otherwise would be lost to eternity.

Raúl Ortega Ayala (1973) is currently living and working in Wellington, New Zealand. He studied Painting at ‘La Esmeralda’ in Mexico City and then traveled to the Glasgow School of Art for a Master in Fine Arts. Solo exhibitions include ‘Living Remains’ at Stroom Den Haag and ‘Melting Pots’ at Rokeby Gallery in London. 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. His next solo exhibition in 2017 will be at Proyectos Monclova in Mexico City. Work by Ortega Ayala is held in private and public collections, including the David Roberts Art Foundation, the AkzoNobel Art Foundation and the VandenBroek Foundation.

Essay

Click to read ‘Presents of the Past’, a specially commissioned interview between Raúl Ortega Ayala and Nat Muller.

Reviews and features

Metropolis M by Ive Stevenheydens

NRC Handelsblad by Gretha Pama

De Groene Amsterdammer by Roos van der Lint

Tubelight by Jip Hinten

Villa Next Door by Albertus Pieters

Art Viewer

Main section: Wieske Wester

Projections: Raúl Ortega Ayala

We Like Art: Alexandre Lavet

Reviews and features

Art Viewer

Lost Painters by Niek Hendrix

Jegens en Tevens by Nathalie van der Lely

chmkoome’s blog by Kees Koomen

Trendbeheer by Jeroen Bosch

De Groene Amsterdammer by Roos van der Lint (Raúl Ortega Ayala)

Lost Painters by Niek Hendrix (Alexandre Lavet)

Dürst Britt & Mayhew is delighted to present French artist Alexandre Lavet‘s first solo exhibition at the gallery.

Alexandre Lavet’s work 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 Lavet wants to bring to light, thereby making the viewer more aware of the environment surrounding him. For his exhibition at Dürst Britt & Mayhew Lavet will show a variety of subtle site-specific interventions within the gallery space.

Alexandre Lavet (1988) received both his BFA and MFA from the École Supérieure d’Art in Clermont-Ferrand (France) and is living and working in Brussels. Current group exhibitions include’Run Run Run’ at Villa Arson in Nice and ‘Déformation Professionelle’ at Galerie Paris-Beijing in Paris. Recent group exhibitions include ‘Vision’ at Palais de Tokyo in Paris, ‘(In)territories/rituals’ at TARS Gallery in Bangkok and ‘The Context’ at Museum Flehite in Amersfoort.

Essay

Click to read ‘Start Looking’, a specially commissioned conversation between Alexandre Lavet and Yasmijn Jarram.

Reviews and features

Trendbeheer Best of 2016

Villa Next Door by Albertus Pieters

Trendbeheer by Johan Nieuwenhuize

chmkoome’s blog by Kees Koomen

For our first participation in Artissima Dürst Britt & Mayhew is proud to present a solo exhibition by Sybren Renema.

Click to read ‘Between Frankenstein and Übermensch’, a conversation between Sybren Renema and Francesca Zappia

Reviews and features

Artsy

Monopol Magazine

La Stampa

Widewalls

Dürst Britt & Mayhew is delighted to present Dutch artist Wieske Wester‘s first exhibition at the gallery.

A cabbage, a bunch of bananas or a whiskey glass. 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. Wrestlers, genitals 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.

Immediately after obtaining her Bachelor’s degree from the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague, Wieske Wester was selected for a two-year working period at De Ateliers in Amsterdam. In 2008 she was nominated for the Buning Brongers Prizes in Amsterdam and for the Focus Abengoa Painting Prize in Seville, Spain. In 2014 she enrolled at the HISK in Ghent to place herself into a new critical context and to further develop her chosen themes and imagery. Wieske Wester lives and works in Ghent and The Hague.

Essay

Click to read a specially commissioned essay by Dominic van den Boogerd

Reviews and features

Art Viewer

chmkoome’s blog by Kees Koomen

Villa Next Door by Albertus Pieters

For our first participation in SUNDAY Art Fair Dürst Britt & Mayhew is proud to present a group exhibition by Paul Beumer, Lennart Lahuis and Raúl Ortega Ayala.

Reviews and features

Artspace

For our second participation in UNSEEN Photo Fair Dürst Britt & Mayhew is delighted to present a group exhibition by Lennart Lahuis, Raúl Ortega Ayala and Sybren Renema.

Reviews and features

Trendbeheer

Mister Motley

For the first edition of CODE Art Fair Dürst Britt & Mayhew is proud to present a solo exhibition by American artist Joseph Montgomery.

The mainstay of Joseph Montgomery’s oeuvre consists of two different types of work. There are the minimalist, monochromatic shims on the one hand and the collages on the other. Both kind of works have the structure and syntax of sculpture, but they simultaneously have all the trappings of painting. This blurring and confounding of classification lends them a strange sense of hybridity.

For Montgomery the works represent different kinds of labour. The shims are composed of a generative, readymade material, the 16 inches long, tapered wedges you can find in the lumber section of any American DIY store. Rearranging them, assembling them, is another way of representing painting. Painting for Montgomery is not the pursuit of one ultimate masterpiece but rather a collection of choices, starting from the ground up, to reach an image-like quality. For his collages he is basically attracted to the classical portrait format with which he creates layered abstract images, which are often reminiscent of faces or muzzles.

Montgomery takes this kind of caricaturization a step further in his most recent, slightly larger and flatter works. They begin as self-portrait pencil sketches on paper, emphasizing a large nose and long hair and perhaps a gender fluidity. The sketches are then vectorized and assigned colours in the computer. Then they are printed on plastic with an emulsion that interacts with alcohol in order to be transferred onto canvas. The goal is to have a single action image production through the transfer process on to the canvas. Chance, liquidity and manipulability take over from then but the artist decides if satisfaction is achieved in that single action.

Besides shims and collages Montgomery also works in other media. He for example makes dolls out of the same wedges he uses for the shims. These figures can manifest themselves physically, but also in the form of animations. They are like avatars that represent an anthropomorphized image of labour. In the animations the doll repeats elementary human actions over and over. Painting for Montgomery is ultimately not about expression: painting is a verb, a repetitive tool, a possibility to keep working.

Joseph Montgomery (1979, Northampton, MA, US) lives and works in New York. Recent solo exhibitions include 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.

Click to see a selection of works on Artspace

Reviews and features

5 Rising Stars to Discover at the Inaugural Code Art Fair

Art Advisor Elizabeth Tenenbaum’s Code Art Fair Picks

Broadly speaking one can argue that Alex Farrar‘s practice concerns itself with biological remnants and dislocation. The biological remnants in question can be as commonplace as pieces of nails and eyelashes found in his studio. These human traces dislocated themselves from their original source and found an apparent end point in a certain space. This specific space however did not allow for natural perishment, as Farrar takes notice of the smallest particles surrounding him.

These smallest particles are not harmless though; an eyelash can irritate the hell out of you when stuck in your eye, nails can inflict even more pain. We nevertheless do not pay much attention to these crescent forms once they are dislocated from the body. A crescent moon is much more romantic to look at.

And what about the crescent forms of our buttocks that leave their imprint on all the couches we sit on throughout our lives. Various forms sit next to each other, enjoying the comfort this furniture provides us with. Sharing thoughts, emotions, touch. Bodies are barrels of memories, but so are the couches on which we allow our buttocks to lower themselves.

Farrar presents us with a clear cut by slicing various couches through the middle, divorcing the conversations and relationships that once went on. The parts are not lost though, only dislocated. One part is in the gallery space, the other part may reside in the artist’s studio, a different exhibition space or a collector’s home. The works may be deemed a celebration of long distance relationships, communication and keeping in touch across all the boundaries that life throws at us.

The same may be said about Farrar’s more abstract sculptures, which are based on abandoned bicycles encountered in city streets all over the world. Their skeletal forms speak of traveling distances, of the eternal effort of bridging boundaries and of beautiful human failure.

Essay

Click to read a specially commissioned conversation between Alex Farrar and Padraíc E. Moore.

Reviews and features

Mousse Magazine

Art Viewer

Click to read ‘Always out of his comfort zone’, a specially commissioned conversation between Raúl Ortega Ayala and Ive Stevenheydens

Traditional Chinese approaches to painting have always been an inspiration to Paul Beumer, especially in the depictions of natural scenery. A classical Chinese landscape painting is not meant to reproduce an actual view, as would a Western figurative painting. Whereas the European painter wants you to borrow his eyes and look at a particular landscape from a specific angle, the Chinese painter does not choose a single viewpoint. His landscape is not a real one, and you can enter it from any point: there are various paths for the eyes to travel or divert from.

In 2015 Beumer spent four months in Xiamen in China as a resident at the Chinese European Art Centre (CEAC), where he further researched his sensibility for the country’s ancient visual forms and techniques and how to combine these with his own Western artistic background. For the previous two years he had been experimenting with mixing inks and watercolours with natural materials such as mud, leaves and twigs, to create compositions, which for the greater part depend on gravity and viscosity to reach their final form.

The painted cotton fabrics shown at the Amsterdam Art Fair still hold this suggestion of various natural processes, but on a much larger scale. The works are irregular, unpretentious, earthy, combining imprints of household objects, like mops and buckets, with more organic forms. The patterns of ink make you travel through a landscape which is both physical and mental. Just like the classical Chinese painter Beumer does not want to borrow you his eyes. He wants you to enter an inner landscape, a spiritual and conceptual space, in which you slowly have to carve your own individual path.

Click to read ‘To capture the spirit of that what you want to depict’, a specially commissioned conversation between Paul Beumer and Noor Mertens.

Reviews and features

See All This by Joke de Wolf

Mister Motley

Trendbeheer by Niels Post

Lost Painters by Niek Hendrix

Silent Light shows a selection of lens-based works from five of the gallery’s represented artists: Alexandre Lavet (FR), Raúl Ortega Ayala (MX), Pieter Paul Pothoven (NL), Sybren Renema (NL) and Puck Verkade (NL). The four videoworks and one slide projection are characterized by their tacit, contemplative nature. Ironically, the only work that is accompanied by sound specifically deals with the theme of silence. All the works in the exhibition force the viewer to slow down and forego any immediate expectations. These works were not created to deliver any instant gratification, but they rather play with the idea of delay and how nature has a different way of ordering things. The cosmos seems to have a bigger plan than what man is able to play out on this world’s stage, however hard he tries.

Essay

Click to read ‘Land of the Enlightened’, a specially commissioned essay by Alix de Massiac.

Reviews and features

Art Viewer

De Correspondent by Marian Cousijn 

Imaginary Game Soundtrack

Artists give their musical answer to the question: How would an imaginary game soundtrack sound?
With: Catherine Biocca (IT/DE), Sarah&Charles (BE), Marguerite van Sandick (NL), Lieven Segers (BE), Frank Koolen feat. UMGEBUNG (NL), Reinaart Vanhoe (BE), Robbert&Frank Frank&Robbert (BE), Sara van Woerden (NL) and Geo Wyeth (US).

After Brussels, Ghent and Rotterdam Dürst Britt & Mayhew will host the release of the Imaginary Game Soundtrack Album. An evening of live presentations of the soundtracks in the form of performances, video, an Art-Fitness session, interventions and installations. Grab a pair of socks at the merch stand. The Album is available in a limited edition (100 hand numbered copies).

A project initiated by Dutch artist Sara van Woerden and supported by the Mondriaan Fund. After The Hague the tour will continue in Berlin, Antwerp and Amsterdam. More info about the project at igsatour.weebly.com.

Imaginary Game Soundtrack is the second event within the framework of GERTRUDE, the gallery’s interdisciplinary side-programme. In between exhibitions, Dürst Britt & Mayhew will invite makers from other cultural cultural fields to activate the gallery space through for example dance, theatre, literature, music or fashion. These makers can be upcoming or established, but what they share is an experimental attitude. By offering them a space to develop and present new productions, we aim to create a platform where different cultural disciplines can meet. The name of this side programme is inspired by Gertrude Stein (1874-1946), legendary writer and patron of the Arts who became well known for organizing salons at her Paris apartment that were frequented by artists, composers, writers, musicians and choreographers.

The programme runs from 8 to 10 pm on Saturday 30 April.

For the inaugural edition of Independent Brussels Dürst Britt & Mayhew presents works by Mexican artist Raúl Ortega Ayala and Dutch artist Pieter Paul Pothoven. Both artists are no strangers to iconoclasm and have a strong predilection for the application of scientific techniques within their artistic practice, be it the use of X-rays on paintings or diamond turning on an antique bronze mirror. These techniques are used to strip away layers of time in order to create new engagements with history. Ortega Ayala’s works reveal images that are hidden under paintings from various museum collections. Pothoven gives back use value to two corroded antique mirrors, in order for us to look at ourselves in an unexpected light.

Click here to read ‘Double Exposure’, a specially commissioned essay by Christel Vesters.

Reviews and features

Art Viewer

Trendbeheer by Jeroen Bosch

Lost Painters by Niek Hendrix

The French term ‘un certain regard’ can actually and ironically enough be described as a look or glance that is hard to describe. In its inevitable erotic connotation it can both be a look of longing, love or lust, as well as of disapproval or disgust. It therefore continually hovers between gazing and staring. While gazing can very well objectify a body, only staring is considered rude as it is directed at difference, deviation and otherness. The borders however can be hard to determine and are bound to very personal predilections or fears.

The works in this international group exhibition all to different degrees objectify the body and test the boundaries between gazing and staring. Various sexual personae and erotic references may make audiences feel both titillated as well as voyeuristic. The works on display manifest a sensitive, but emancipatory form of eroticism. Therefore, from the exhibiting artists’ position ‘un certain regard’ is not a vague concept, but translates as a convinced, assertive and genuine view on contemporary sensuality.

With: Sylvie Fleury, Celia Hempton, Dean Hutton, Rachel de Joode, Leigh Ledare, Walter Pfeiffer, Daniel Sinsel, Martin Soto Climent, Julie Verhoeven, Taocheng Wang, Wieske Wester.

We would like to thank the following galleries and publishers for their kind cooperation: Cinnnamon, Sadie Coles, Christophe Gaillard, MOREpublishers, Neumeister Bar-Am, Office Baroque, Proyectos Monclova, Sultana, Fons Welters.

Essay

Click to read ‘Desires are ghosts that dissolve as soon as you light the lamp of good sense’, a specially commissioned essay by Judith Vrancken.

Reviews and features

Art Viewer

O Fluxo

Trendbeheer by Jeroen Bosch

Villa Next Door by Albertus Pieters

chmkoome’s blog by Kees Koomen

galeries.nl by Paul Voors

For our second participation in Art Rotterdam Dürst Britt & Mayhew presents a solo booth by Lennart Lahuis.

Lennart Lahuis’ main artistic concern is the suspension of visual information. His deployment of very diverse materials results in works that seem to be in a constant state of transformation and try to slow down the process of immediate access to imagery.

For his presentation at Art Rotterdam Lahuis created a series of eight silkscreens that he subsequently burnt. The appropriated images on the silkscreens are taken from advertisements for luxury watches. By speeding up the process of deterioration Lahuis puts an emphasis on the themes of duration and consumption. The advertised eternity of these high-end watches seems to be negated by the burnt paper. In a way Lahuis seems to capture the last breath of an image and put it bluntly in front of an image hungry audience. He considers the image as a material, as an element that has to deal with the process of time and its consequences. The image will become frail, fade away and eventually die.

This correlation between construction and deconstruction is reminiscent of Federico Fellini’s famous film 8 ½, in which an eminent director, played by Marcello Mastroianni, starts the production of his next movie while suffering from “director’s block”. The film was highly influential as it liberated subsequent filmmakers of the conventions of time, place and mode of experience that had prevailed up to the 1960s. Lahuis silkscreened and burnt two film stills as a reference to 8 ½ ’s dealing with the deconstruction of narrative and the never-ending greed for image production.

The walls of the booth have been covered in wallpaper and show two sentences relating to transparency and the transfer of information. The words are made from glass micro beads. To be able to read the sentences the viewer has to slowly navigate around the booth in order for the reflection to hit the eye and the information to reach the brain.

Click to read ‘An Attempt to Measure the Fragility of Time’, a specially commissioned essay by Lorenzo Benedetti.

Reviews and features

Metropolis M by Alix de Massiac

Trendbeheer by Jeroen Bosch

Lost Painters by Niek Hendrix

Reservoir

Sybren Renema is drawn to the obscure corners of all forms of human discourse, with a particular liking for art, history, geographical exploration and the natural sciences. These different fascinations are often combined in the same work, highlighting a predilection for unconventional forms of knowledge-production as well as a sense of the absurd and the grotesque. His interests are addressed through various media, such as photography, collage and neon.

The exhibition derives its title from the last sentence of ‘Kubla Khan’, a poem by the 19th century British Lake Poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who was infamous for his use of opium and his sprawling public lectures. Coleridge can be considered as one of the first cultural critics, but was nevertheless notoriously inconsistent in his output. The exhibition borrows freely from Romantic tropes and clichés such as nature, substance use and the sublime and mixes these into a heady concoction.

Central to the exhibition is a sculpture titled ‘Study for the death mask of an average Romantic’. It has been generated from the measurements of the death masks of 32 artists from the Romantic age and has subsequently been 3D-printed. Devoid of any individuality, yet made up of those people whose individuality was their greatest revolutionary potential, it is equal parts worship and mockery. The work touches on the question of what it is to be a creative genius, but also displays the perverse power of technology in the face of something as sacred as death and eternity.

The Milk of Paradise is kindly supported by Creative Scotland and Glasgow Life.

Essay

Click to read ‘Objects of Narrative’, a specially commissioned conversation between Sybren Renema and Brian H. Murray

Reviews and features

Artforum by Robert-Jan Muller

de Volkskrant by Jeanne Prisser

Villa La Repubblica by Albertus Pieters

chmkoome’s blog by Kees Koomen

Jegens & Tevens by Jeroen van der Hulst

For its first participation in The Others in a former prison in Turin Dürst Britt & Mayhew presents Sigh, an installation of works on paper by Dutch artist Paul Beumer.

Paul Beumer’s painting practice oscillates freely between figuration and abstraction. His recent works on paper, made with watercolour and ink, bear a strong relation to the manifold spontaneous processes happening in nature and its ever-changing scenes and colours. Just like one cannot predict the shapes of a cloud or the structures of semi-precious stones, Beumer leaves it partly up to chance how his work will turn out. The works are presented on low pedestals, as a reference to how they were originally produced. Inks and watercolours were mixed with materials from nature, such as mud, leaves and twigs, to create compositions, which for the greater part depend on gravity and viscosity to reach their final form.

Joseph Montgomery’s work 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. Montgomery’s expansion of abstract painting results in two distinctive types of painting: collages and shims.

For Rules for Coyote Montgomery makes use of the colour scheme of the famous Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner cartoons (created in 1948 for Warner Bros.), which are situated in the southwest American desert. Red-brown (the colour of rock formations), yellow (the colour of sand), green (the colour of cacti), dark brown (the colour of Wile E. Coyote) and blue (the colour of Road Runner) are just a few of these constantly recurring colours. Montgomery humorously compares his practice with the fate of the coyote, who constantly fails to catch the bird but never tires of coming up with another ’solution’.

Essay

Click to read ‘Painting is a recording of choices not of uniqueness’, a specially commissioned conversation between Joseph Montgomery and Edo Dijksterhuis.

Reviews and features

Villa la Repubblica by Albertus Pieters

Villa Next Door by Albertus Pieters

Lost Painters by Niek Hendrix

chmkoome’s blog by Kees Koomen

Reviews and features

Trendbeheer by Niels Post

chmkoomes’s blog by Kees Koomen

Reviews and features

NRC Handelsblad by Sandra Smallenburg

Mister Motley by Lieneke Hulshof

Collector Daily by Loring Knoblauch

Trendbeheer by Johan Nieuwenhuize

Reviews and features

Mister Motley

Trendbeheer by Justin Wijers

Lost Painters by Niek Hendrix

Paul Beumer’s painting practice oscillates freely between figuration and abstraction. His recent works, made with ink and watercolour, bear a strong relation to the manifold spontaneous processes happening in nature and its ever-changing scenes and colours. Just like one cannot predict the shapes of a cloud or the structures of semi-precious stones, Beumer leaves it partly up to chance how his work will turn out. There is no set goal, but ample room for coincidences. In a way the works in this exhibition seem to have grown all by themselves and the artist just happened upon them by accident and combined them into an immersive and ephemeral installation.

Essay

Click to read ‘Paul Beumer, I won’t have the luxury of seeing scenes like this much longer’, a specially commissioned essay by Merel van Tilburg.

Reviews and features

Art Viewer

chmkoome’s blog by Kees Koomen

For its first participation in LOOP Fair Barcelona Dürst Britt & Mayhew is premiering Puck Verkade’s videowork Solitary Company.

Solitary Company is a portrait of a remote island as seen through the eyes of its inhabitants. It was filmed in the micro-community of Hrisey, an island off the north coast of Iceland, during the darkest months in winter when all is covered in snow and silence. During a month-long residency on Hrisey, Puck Verkade conducted interviews with three generations of local people, about their personal connection with the island, the effect of living in such a small community off the mainland, and their relationship to silence. Throughout the video we never get to see the faces of the interviewees, only their backs and the views they can see through the windows. The island itself thus becomes an additional character, showing its empty landscape and silent presence. The circular frame stresses visual isolation as well as the physical borders of the island. Essentially the narrative reflects on the borders of solitude, on silence and its inevitable connection to mortality.

Click to read a specially commissioned conversation between Puck Verkade and Jacob Dwyer

Reviews and features

ArtSlant by Edo Dijksterhuis

For the first edition of Amsterdam Art Fair Dürst Britt & Mayhew presents a solo presentation by Dutch artist Pieter Paul Pothoven, whose artistic practice concerns itself with the historic and social connotations of various valuable objects, ranging from lapis lazuli to ancient Egyptian mirrors. Pothoven mixes personal experience and first-hand research with historical information, which he ultimately translates into immersive installations.

Pieter Paul Pothoven’s approach predominantly relates to Walter Benjamin’s idea of a past that constitutes present meaning. His aim is to unearth the blind spots in the meaning and significance of his chosen objects within the framework of their given historical narratives. These are not alchemistic acts of turning formerly invaluable objects into precious artefacts, but conceptual exercises and manual gestures that add layers and narratives to pre-existing abstracts. In the work of Pieter Paul Pothoven objects become subjects that transgress information, value or meaning as they are drawn into the artistic realm.

Click to read ‘Like a Rolling Stone’, a specially commissioned essay by Vincent van Velsen.

Reviews and features

Metropolis M by Domeniek Ruyters

Mister Motley by Heske ten Cate

Trendbeheer by Jeroen Bosch

Lost Painters by Niek Hendrix

chmkoome’s blog by Kees Koomen

Jegens & Tevens by Marie Civikov

Lennart Lahuis’ artistic practice concerns itself with the suspension of visual information. For his recent series of works the artist collected reproductions that come standard with picture frames and serve as an example to the buyer. Many of these interchangeable picture frames contain cliché images of models, sunsets and cityscapes, but also reproductions of famous artworks. These images are disposable and destined to be thrown away the minute the buyer puts a photograph of their own choice inside the frame. Lahuis searches out examples that intrigue by their sheer oddity or sense of disengagement, adding images of exotic figures or plain measurements. He subsequently magnifies the image, covers it with a glass plate, newspaper and beeswax, thereby rendering it practically unrecognizable. For the viewer this means having to slow down to gain access to the visual information on offer: casting a glance is not sufficient. Lahuis thus confronts us with the apparent interchangeability of images within our society and the active role we have in sustaining or changing this. Next to these particular works Lahuis will activate the space with his ongoing series of wet scene studies. The reflective surfaces of three large foilworks in the exhibition further mirror the viewer’s problematic navigation through visual data.

Essay

Click to read a specially commissioned conversation between Lennart Lahuis and Julia Geerlings.

Reviews and features 

Metropolis M by Domeniek Ruyters

The Art Markets by Sini Rinne-Kanto

Lost Painters by Niek Hendrix

chmkoome’s blog by Kees Koomen

For its first participation in Poppositions in Brussels Dürst Britt & Mayhew presents the work of French artist Alexandre Lavet.

Alexandre Lavet’s work plays with the idea of emptiness, disappearance and erasure. Under the apparent homogeneity of an exhibition space lie the details that mark the uniqueness and specificity of the place. It is these elements that Lavet wants to bring to light, thereby making the viewer more aware of the environment surrounding him. Lavet’s photoseries Vides shows a set of different exhibition spaces from the ‘White Cube’ ideology, but they are empty of artworks. He retouched the internet-sourced images by removing the artworks from them, thereby simultaneously constituting a new work and bringing attention to the specifics of the exhibition spaces themselves. Next to the Vides series Lavet will show a variety of subtle site-specific interventions within the space of the booth.

Reviews and features

Trendbeheer by Jeroen Bosch

Don’t Laugh at the Sunlight Upon Me
A play by Adrian Bridget, with Michael de Roos and Vincent van Ommen

Don’t Laugh at the Sunlight Upon Me is an experimental one-act play for two actors. The play is written and directed by Adrian Bridget. Referencing the myth of Icarus, it narrates the longing struggle of a mad servant, who has made his master a hostage to his private psychological delirium. Through an effervescent use of language, the play deals with the themes of individual truth and brotherly love in an attempt to reconcile theatrical tradition and contemporary audiences.

Adrian Bridget (1990), born Adrian Mazzarolo, is an Amsterdam-based artist and writer operating in the fields of poetry, film and theatre. Following his graduation from the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague, his works have been featured in TENT (Rotterdam), Impakt Festival (Utrecht) and Dürst Britt & Mayhew’s opening exhibition Urbi et Orbi.

Don’t Laugh at the Sunlight Upon Me is the first event within the framework of GERTRUDE, the gallery’s interdisciplinary side-programme. In between exhibitions, Dürst Britt & Mayhew will invite makers from other cultural cultural fields to activate the gallery space through for example dance, theatre, literature, music or fashion. These makers can be upcoming or established, but what they share is an experimental attitude. By offering them a space to develop and present new productions, we aim to create a platform where different cultural disciplines can meet. The name of this side programme is inspired by Gertrude Stein (1874-1946), legendary writer and patron of the Arts who became well known for organizing salons at her Paris apartment that were frequented by artists, composers, writers, musicians and choreographers.

Dürst Britt & Mayhew is inaugurating its new gallery in The Hague with the group exhibition Urbi et Orbi, showcasing a selection of alumni from the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague from 2009 up to now.

All participating artists share an ambition and courage to venture out into the world and carve a name for themselves; some have already won important art prizes, others have been picked up by influential galleries or admitted to prestigious postgraduate institutions. Urbi et Orbi will show the wide variety of these artists’ practices, who all started out in The Hague.

With: Juliaan Andeweg, Paul Beumer, Bob Eikelboom, Katinka van Gorkum, Gitte Hendrikx, Thomas van Linge, Adrian Mazzarolo, Sybren Renema, Machteld Rullens, Daniel van Straalen, Puck Verkade, Hanae Wilke, Victor Yudaev, Timmy van Zoelen.

Reviews and features

Metropolis M by Lilian Bense

Villa La Repubblica by Albertus Pieters

chmkoome’s blog by Kees Koomen

Trendbeheer by Johan Nieuwenhuize

Jegens & Tevens by George Vermij

For its first participation in Art Rotterdam Dürst Britt & Mayhew presents the work of American artist Joseph Montgomery (1979). His work 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. Montgomery’s expansion of abstract painting results in two distinctive types of painting: collages and shims. Lately he also added animation and wallpaper to his practice. Montgomery recently had a solo show at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA) and his work was shown in the much-discussed exhibition ‘Painter Painter’ at The Walker Art Centre in Minneapolis.

Reviews and features

Metropolis M by Domeniek Ruyters

de Volkskrant by Merel Buiting

Kunstbeeld by Nadia van Vuuren and Gerda van de Glind

Lost Painters by Niek Hendrix

Trendbeheer by Jeroen Bosch

Trendbeheer by Jeroen Bosch (2)

5uur…!!! by annothes