In the front space of the gallery: Willem Hussem (1900-1974)

Joseph Montgomery’s second solo exhibition at the gallery is comprised of shim paintings. Whereas in previous exhibitions his work has combined both soft collage and the hard edges of the shim painting, this exhibition is only built upon the base structure of wedge combinations. This includes an animation in which the protagonist is also constructed from wedges.

Shims are thin pieces of construction material typically used to fill in a gap or as a leveling device and are often made of cedar, a rot resistant type of lumber. They are used in two places in Montgomery’s work, the “shim painting” and the “shim doll”, both of which are composed of articulations of the modular unit. Thus the shim forms the basis of an expressive visual language through repetition and difference. They are present in the application suites shimindex.com and dollindex.com as two tools that allow the artist to compose a doll or painting by displaying all possible iterations given a set of limitations.

The title “Joe” comes from the fact that the artist is called by two names. He is Joe informally and Joseph formally. Similarly, a painting can be named twice or three or four times. Montgomery’s use of multiple aesthetics to construct paintings names painting both as a friendly practice and a strange practice. The play between informal and formal occurs in this new body of work’s use of mirror as a painting material. Collaged within the shims by occupying the interstitial space between the wedges, the reflective surface renders the figure ground relationships ambiguous while giving the decorative nature of the material a more psychological purpose. In the fragmentation of the architecture around the object and the reflection of the viewer’s body in portions, the shim + mirror combination announces a protagonist who is mutable relative to perspective. Similarly, a set of three monochromes appear solid from afar. At an intimate distance, bundled wedges and rectangles undulate under the skin of paint.

In the animation, the shim doll bathes. Based on the Bonnard painting Nude in the Bath (1936), the doll continuously labours to rest amidst two other characters, reflection in the fluid and shadow in the depths.

front space: Willem Hussem (1900 – 1974)

As a prelude to his solo exhibition at Dürst Britt & Mayhew in the spring of 2019 we will show a small selection of works by renowned Dutch artist Willem Hussem (1900-1974) in the front space of the gallery.

As an artist Willem Hussem 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 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.

Essay

Click to read a specially commissioned interview by Edwin Jacobs, director of Dortmunder U.

Reviews and features

Art Viewer

Den Haag Centraal by Eline van der Haak

Villa Next Door by Albertus Pieters

Jegens en Tevens by Frits Dijcks

Kunst  blijft een raadsel by Paul Voors

For our first participation in NADA Miami Dürst Britt & Mayhew is proud to collaborate with LETO from Warsaw.

In our co-curated booth we present works by four of our artists: Paul Beumer (NL), Jacqueline de Jong (NL), Joseph Montgomery (US) and Sybren Renema (NL). Combined with the works by Angelika Markul (PL), Radek Szlaga (PL), and Aleksandra Waliszewska (PL) from LETO, the presentation will be characterized by references to the transformational potential of vegetation and the global environment.

Reviews and features

Art Viewer

Trendbeheer by Anouk Griffioen

Paul Beumer (NL), Kristan Kennedy (US) and David Roth (AT), the three artists presented at Parallel Vienna, 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.

Dürst Britt & Mayhew first brought these artists together in last year’s international group show ‘Stretch Release‘, which focused on ‘paintings’ that do not necessarily ask to be hung rectangularly from a wall, but can just as well be placed as markers within the architecture of a given space. Works that subtly influence the viewers’ gaze and movements, without immediately turning into obvious sculptural interventions.

The presentation at Parallel Vienna can be seen as a sequence to ‘Stretch Release’ in a compressed form.

Reviews and features

Atelier Judith by Judith Bradlwarter

To start off the new season Dürst Britt & Mayhew is proud to present a duo exhibition with new paintings and drawings by Jacqueline de Jong and Wieske Wester. Both from a different generation, they give their own specific twist to classical genres such as the food-still life and landscape painting. Besides new work, De Jong will also show works from the 1980s and 1960s. What connects these two painters is the energy of their brushstrokes and draughtsmanship as well as a seemingly fearless approach to their chosen medium and themes. The combination of Wester’s penchant for seafood and De Jong’s liking for potatoes makes for an intriguing juxtaposition.

Image:

Wieske Wester, Fish #6, 2017.

Charcoal and Indian ink on paper,
 50 × 70 cm.

Essay

Click to read ‘I do not paint nature. I am nature’, a specially commissioned essay by Robert-Jan Muller

Reviews and features

Art Viewer

Villa Next Door by Albertus Pieters

“Friday, 9:45pm…Three years ago, the hot sticky August rain fell big and wet as I sat listlessly on my porch at home, crying over the way summer would not come again– never the same. The first story in print came from that ‘never again’ refrain beat out by the rain. August rain: the best of the summer gone, and the new fall not yet born. The odd uneven time.”

Sylvia Plath, JOURNALS [August 8, 1952]

For the summer season of 2018 Dürst Britt & Mayhew is proud to present a group exhibition with a selection of works by our eleven represented artists.

Image:

Jacqueline de Jong, Untitled (diary drawing), 1974.

Acrylic and indian ink on paper, 58 x 79 cm.

Reviews and features

Trendbeheer by Jeroen Bosch

For our first participation in LISTE – Art Fair Basel Dürst Britt & Mayhew is proud to present a duo exhibition by Puck Verkade and Wieske Wester. Their presentation forms a dialogue on power structures, gender issues, and stereotypes concerning the body and sexuality.

Puck Verkade is premiering her new video work ‘BAIT’, dealing with the topic of sexual consent, within the confines of a sculptural bed. The walls of the booth are covered in Wieske Wester’s sensual paintings and drawings of bananas and oysters – motives often associated with fertility and procreation.

Themes of dominance and aggression recur in both artists’ practices. While Wester is looking for inner forces and energies, Verkade is more interested in social constructions and externalised behaviours that have come to define our culture. Nevertheless, according to Wester even a painted image of an orange can portray a war and for Verkade humour is an entry into the sticky political subjects that her work touches upon.

Puck Verkade (1987, NL) received her BFA from the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague and recently completed her MFA Fine Art with distinction at Goldsmiths University, London. Her work has been shown internationally at various venues, such as Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, Berlin Feminist Film Festival, If So What?/Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco, Gasworks in London, and LOOP in Barcelona. Forthcoming projects in 2018 include a solo show at Art Night London and an artist commission for Daata Editions. Verkade’s work is held in private and public collections, including the AKZO Nobel Art Foundation in Amsterdam. She lives and works in London, where she has been selected as a resident artist at Sarabande The Lee Alexander McQueen Foundation for 2017–2018.

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. Forthcoming projects in 2018 include a group exhibition at 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 the Lisser Art Museum in Lisse, Netherlands and the Ahold collection in Amsterdam. She lives and works in The Hague, Netherlands.

Essay

Click to read ‘Oysters and Bananas’, a specially commissioned essay by Kate Strain, artistic director of the Grazer Kunstverein in Austria.

Preview

For more information on the works on show please visit our dedicated ARTSY page.

Reviews and features

Artsy by Nate Freeman

Art Diary by Anita Zabludowicz

Il Sole 24 Ore by Nicola Zanella

Artsy by Anna Louie Sussman

de Volkskrant by Stefan Kuiper

Trendbeheer by Inge Pollet

Trendbeheer by Jeroen Bosch

Interior Russia

facade suspended, the first solo exhibition by Pieter Paul Pothoven at Dürst Britt & Mayhew, sheds light on RARA, the Revolutionary Anti-Racist Action. During the 1980s and 1990s, this resistance collective fought against racism, oppression and exploitation, the ongoing legacy of Dutch imperialist history.

The works on show are the first in a series in which Pothoven, in close consultation with RARA, both documents and elaborates on this unprecedented case of post-war resistance. Point of departure for this exhibition is Overtoom 274, a house in Amsterdam that played a pivotal role in the exposure of RARA. facade suspended focuses on a police raid on the premises that took place in 1988, as well as on the facade itself, which is not only linked to RARA, but also has its own distinctive connection to the Dutch colonial past.

On the occasion of facade suspended, a conversation between Yvette Mutumba (co-curator Berlin Biennial 2018 and editor-in-chief of the art magazine C&) and Pothoven will be published, as well as a text by historian and journalist Roeland Muskens (author of: On the right side, a biography of the Dutch anti-apartheidsmovement 1960-1990).

Essay

Click to read ‘Balancing Acts: a conversation between Pieter Paul Pothoven and Yvette Mutumba’.

Reviews and features

Metropolis M by Yvette Mutumba

Villa La Repubblica by Albertus Pieters

Villa Next Door by Albertus Pieters

In the Discovery section of Art Brussels 2018 Dürst Britt & Mayhew will present a solo booth by Dutch artist Lennart Lahuis (*1986).  In Europe’s capital Lahuis will show a body of new works, which can be seen as a visual exploration into the concept and understanding of ‘Europe’.

For a series of works on paper, Lahuis’ deployed a paper restoration technique that was developed by the Anna Amalia Library in Weimar, Germany after a devastating fire in 2004. Large parts of their collection, with many unique books and handwritten sheet music from the Age of Enlightenment, were destroyed. A substantial part however, was found in good enough condition to be restored. This was achieved by integrating the burnt and brittle ancient paper into a new, handmade sheet of paper. Lahuis appropriated this technique, which physically embodies the integration of the old into the new, to reproduce burnt contemporary images and texts that deal with the tension between integration and disintegration.

The series on view consists of seven so-called ‘pressure maps’. These maps show the changing pressure levels over the EU. The lines that run through these images are constantly shifting as if the continent is not divided by borders, but by ever changing weather patterns. The maps seem to be slammed into the paper and the image of the continent disintegrates differently with every forecast, each work corresponding to one day of the week.

An accompanying sculptural installation consists of a cascade, with water silently running over a slab of wet clay. On this piece of clay one can read the introduction page of a recent scientific article from renowned magazine Nature. During Brexit, a team of scientists inadvertently concluded extensive research into a ‘geological Brexit’ that happened 450.000 years ago. The article describes the erosion of a chalk ridge that once connected the United Kingdom to continental Europe. Lahuis reproduced the first page of this article in Weald Clay, which is the exact clay the article mentions as having played an important role in the erosion of the land that was once the Dover Strait.

In his presentation Lahuis uses different forms of erosion to emphasise a multi-layered tension between integration and disintegration. The story of the formation and geological history of Europe, as well as the ephemeral pressure patterns constantly allude to and resonate with the political and climatic upheavals of our time.

Essay

Click to read a specially commissioned essay by Eelco van der Lingen.

Preview

For more information on the works on show please visit our dedicated ARTSY page.

Reviews and features

Art Viewer

Lost Painters

Preview

For more information on the works on show please visit our dedicated ARTSY page.

Reviews and features

H Art by Sam Steverlynck

Diario de Noticias