For the first edition of Art Antwerp Dürst Britt & Mayhew is proud to present a solo exhibition by Dutch artist Jacqueline de Jong (1939).
The presentation at Art Antwerp focuses on works from the 1990s and specifically on works made on sailcloth and panel. Working on sailcloth started with a commission for a branch of the Nederlandse Bank in Drachten in Friesland in 1992. De Jong was fascinated by the many shipyards in the area, where skûtsjes were built and thus she came across various discarded pieces of sailcloth. The resulting piece, ‘The Backside of Existence’, has recently been on view in De Jong’s retrospective at WIELS in Brussels, which has just traveled on to Mostyn in Wales and next year to Kunstmuseum Ravensburg in Germany.
The commission started a further series of works on sailcloth. The striking work ‘Hanging Woman’ will be included in the presentation at Art Antwerp. This piece of painted unstretched cloth serves as a staging for a series of other paintings on sailcloth and board, depicting various road accidents. Both the work ‘Hanging Woman’ and the car crash paintings are reminiscent of de Jong’s ‘Accidental’ and ‘Suicidal’ paintings from the 1960s. Despair and chaos are never far away and the works are a stark reminder of our current feverish times, in which we have to fight our monsters and try to find our feet again.
A series of small Indian ink drawings mounted on panel from 1973 complete the presentation, with their restless and hallucinatory imagery. They show De Jong’s continuous agility to stage her haunting protagonists, be they humans or monsters, in diverse formats and materials.
Jacqueline de Jong (NL, 1939) is revered for her involvement in European avant-garde networks including the Gruppe SPUR and the politically engaged Situationist International movement and for founding, editing and publishing The Situationist Times in Paris in the 1960s. 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.
Recently De Jong had a survey show at WIELS Contemporary Art Centre in Brussels, which has now traveled to MOSTYN Contemporary Art Gallery, Wales and in 2022 to Kunstmuseum Ravensburg, Germany. This exhibition is accompanied by a comprehensive monographic publication.
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 Treize in Paris, ‘Plankenkoorts’ at Dürst Britt & Mayhew, ’Resilience(s)’ at Pippy Houldsworth Gallery in London and ‘Billiards 1976-78’ at Château Shatto in Los Angeles.
De Jong’s most recent work is currently on view at Ortuzar Pojects in New York and has received extensive coverage in The New York Times. Recent group exhibitions include ‘She-Bam Pow POP Wizz!’ at MAMAC in Nice, ‘Radio-Activity’ at Lenbachhaus in Munich, ‘The Most Dangerous Game’ at Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin, ‘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 ‘Strategic Vandalism: the Legacy of Asger Jorn’s Modification Paintings’ at Galerie Petzel, New York.
Work by De Jong is held in private and public collections including Centre Pompidou, Paris; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Musée d’art moderne de la Ville de Paris, Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Museum Jorn, Silkeborg; Lenbachhaus, Munich; Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, Oslo; Kunstmuseum Göteborg; MCCA Toronto; MONA, Tasmania; Rachofsky Collection, Dallas; Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem; Museum Arnhem; Cobra Museum for Modern Art, Amstelveen. 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.
