02 Sep 2023 - 28 Oct 2023
For his second solo exhibition at Dürst Britt & Mayhew Mexican born artist Raúl Ortega Ayala presents a series of photographs he took on the Caribbean island of Montserrat. The island has a long colonial history, but in the 20th century turned into a vacation destination mostly for British citizens visiting their overseas territory. In 1989 a hurricane devastated large parts of the island. In 1995 a previously dormant volcano erupted. Its ashes buried numerous sites around the island, including the capital city of Plymouth, creating a large uninhabitable exclusion zone that spans more than half of its territory to the south.
Ortega Ayala visited different sites within the exclusion zone and kept running across objects that contained sounds or that had a connection with its production. He found out that George Martin, who was the producer of the Beatles, had opened an avant-garde recording studio called Air Studios Montserrat, after falling in love with the island during a visit in 1979. For over a decade more than seventy albums were recorded either partly or entirely at Air Studios, by well-known rock and pop musicians like Lou Reed, Paul McCartney, The Police, Elton John, Duran Duran, Eric Clapton, Dire Straits, Black Sabbath, and The Rolling Stones, amongst others. Ortega Ayala also focused on other buildings on the island where music played an important role, such as churches where pipe organs and choral singing sounded until the volcanic eruption.
The exhibition will include a collaboration with a DJ to produce three soundscapes, which will use the music recorded at Air Studios Montserrat and a variety of sounds derived from reels and albums unearthed by Ortega Ayala from under the ashes, as well as acoustic experiments conducted in the now derelict studios.
The Hague based DJ / producer The Social Lover will create the first soundscape during the opening of the exhibition, followed by sets on Friday 29 September and Friday 13 October. After performing these sets, the recorded versions will function as an integral part of the exhibition.
On Wednesday 27 September a video-work that is part of Ortega Ayala’s Montserrat project will premiere at Filmhuis Den Haag as part of the monthly Glued & Screwed programme, which is curated by wysiwyg.
Raúl Ortega Ayala (1973) is a visual artist whose practice is research-based. Since 2012 his artwork has focused on the ways in which societies and individuals remember, forget or repress their past. The overarching title for these works is ‘From the Pit of Et Cetera’ and Montserrat (a phono-archaeology) sits within this framework. Recent solo and group exhibitions include ‘The Zone, Chernobyl (2013-2020)’ at Proyectos Monclova in Mexico City, ‘The Zone’ at Te Tuhi in Auckland, New Zealand and ‘Normal exceptions’ at Museo Jumex in Mexico City. His work is held in private and public collections, including the Roberts Institute, the AkzoNobel Art Foundation and the LAM Museum in Lisse.
Essay
Click to read a specially commissioned essay by Arno van Roosmalen
Reviews and features
Gallery Viewer by Pienk de Gaay Fortman
02 Sep 2023 - 28 Oct 2023
Daniel Cabrillos Jacobsen is a recent graduate from the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague. Combining his Danish and Filipino background, he approaches painting with a colourful and intuitive style that reflects his dual cultural identity. His work not only celebrates his heritage but also draws inspiration from the influences of his childhood, including the world of ‘street-culture’ where he first began to wield a paintbrush. Cabrillos Jacobsen weaves stories onto the canvas, which are inspired by the tapestry of his everyday life and cherished memories from years gone by. Playfulness and melancholy seem to blend seamlessly.
He sees his paintings as mediums for story-telling, where the story-telling is not only limited to the painting’s visual composition and figuration, but continues in the physical aspects of the painting. By layering, erasing and re-working his images, he tries to create a language which is evoked by more formal aspects, such as colours, lines, shapes, and textures. The use of discarded textiles or wood is a distinguishing feature within his works.
Cabrillos Jacobsen’s paintings show figures, whose origins are difficult to pin down. His work can be seen as a research of the spaces in between; being half this, being half that, being half here, being half there. It serves as a metaphor of being outside and inside. What can our personal histories and cultural identity teach us? How do we relate as locals, as foreigners, as tourists or even as expats? Where do we really belong? The people in Cabrillos Jacobsen’s paintings are nevertheless ‘vibing’ and seem to be enjoying each other’s company and their surroundings. They have a contemplative and relaxed attitude and seem to take things in their stride.
Daniel Cabrillos Jacobsen (1996, DK) is a visual artist based in Amsterdam. This summer he graduated from the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague. He considers himself as a painter, but also works with collage, textiles and sculpture. Recent solo exhibitions include ‘Wanderlust’ at Chaxartxams in Amsterdam. Recent group exhibitions include ‘Act II: The Observatory’ at Ombrella in Copenhagen.
Essay
Click to read a specially commissioned interview by Melchior Jaspers
Reviews and features
Villa La Repubblica by Albertus Pieters
Villa Next Door by Albertus Pieters
03 Jun 2023 - 16 Jul 2023
Jacqueline de Jong’s third solo exhibition at Dürst Britt & Mayhew brings together a series of large-scale paintings made between February 2022 and May 2023. ‘Idlib in Snow’, a painting completed at the beginning of 2022, marks the transition from a series of works about one catastrophic event, the refugee crisis in Syria, to another: the war in Ukraine. The refugee tents in Idlib at Syria’s border are covered with snow, which, in hindsight, can be seen as a dark omen of the crises that would unfold further north, in Ukraine. The canvasses that follow carry the names of Ukrainian cities that, over the course of the last year, have become battlegrounds. Alongside the works dedicated to the war in Ukraine, two paintings with refugees return, as this catastrophe continues to unfold as well. Her most recent painting, ‘Disasters’, brings the two subject matters together.
Reflecting De Jong’s working process, the exhibition also includes two works less directly related to political events. De Jong refers to them as “loose works.” They function as playgrounds or sketchbooks developed alongside the more reality-bound paintings. These imaginative works make no direct references to contemporary political realities and are instead populated by De Jong’s signature humanoid creatures – skeletons, monsters, animal- human hybrids – in chaotic distribution, equal parts dangerous, dark, deadly and erotic.
Throughout her oeuvre, many of De Jong’s works have absorbed moments of crisis and terror, moments in which order has dissolved and something bigger, more terrifying has taken over. Wars have been frequent subjects and continue to haunt De Jong’s imagination as terrifying, all-consuming machines that leave the humans forced to go through them in chaos and disarray. Figure and ground tumble, perspectives collapse and flames flare up between rubble and ruins; buildings fall, and figures are squeezed into the diminishing spaces between them. The human bodies depicted have become pliable, they are thrown around, and when they appear as a mass or in groups – as they often do in the works that refer to the refugee crisis – their bodies are stacked and packed tightly, piled on top of each other. They are pushed and pulled, mangled and thrown away, degraded to material. Lines are crossed here, in the most dehumanizing ways.
_
Text by Melanie Bühler, Senior Curator at Kunstmuseum St. Gallen in Switzerland
Click here for an overview of exhibited works
Reviews and features
Villa La Repubblica by Bertus Pieters
19 Feb 2023 - 16 Jul 2023
Alexandre Lavet’s work constantly seems to hover on the verge of presence and disappearance. He plays with the apparent homogeneity of exhibition spaces to uncover the details that mark the uniqueness and specificity of each place. It is these particularities that Lavet wants to bring to light, thereby slowing down the viewers’ gaze and making them more aware of their surroundings.
For (､ﾝ､), his second solo show at the gallery, Lavet proposed to relocate all the packed artworks from the gallery’s storage to the main exhibition space. By this intervention he allows the audience to enter an environment full of ‘sleeping’ artworks, a moment of stasis, and of anticipation of what is hiding in the crates and bubblewrap.
The exhibition space has been darkened and in some places resembles the artist’s own bedroom: the walls have a similar colour and mouldings and even the cling on the entrance door has been replicated. Piles of literature about sleeping and rest are strewn throughout the space and the artist’s custom made pajamas are lying about. Drawings of cartoon characters at rest are placed on top of some of the artworks. When one listens carefully one can hear the muffled sounds of the outside world as if in a state between sleeping and waking, between dreaming and reality.
The first version of (､ﾝ､) ran from 3 September 2022 until 5 February 2023. For the second version of (､ﾝ､) Lavet has changed the whole choreography of the exhibition and added various new interventions. Just like in a dream the space has all of a sudden changed form and although it might resemble the first iteration, nothing is in the same place anymore.
Alexandre Lavet (France,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 ‘When in Doubt, Go to a Museum’ at City Museum of Ljubljana, ‘Grand Salon’ at Centre d’Art Contemporain/Passages in Troyes, France, ‘Olaph the Oxman’ at Copperfield Gallery, London, ‘Vision’ at Palais de Tokyo in Paris, ‘Run Run Run’ at Villa Arson in Nice, and ‘The Context’ at Museum Flehite in Amersfoort, Netherlands.
Lavet’s work is held in private and public collections, including the moraes-barbosa collection in São Paulo, The EKARD collection and the Lisser Art Museum (LAM) in The Netherlands. Alexandre Lavet is living and working in Brussels.
Reviews and features
De Volkskrant by Janna Reinsma
16 Apr 2023 - 21 May 2023
Dürst Britt & Mayhew is proud to present Bram De Jonghe‘s first solo exhibition at the gallery.
De Jonghe relates to his surroundings like a sculptor. His spatial interventions respond to the (exhibition) space: to imperfect architecture, to the so called neutrality of the white cube, or to the way people walk into a space. Each space has its own unique characteristics, and supporting or countering these qualities serve as a formal starting point. In his own words he favours the visual residue of a do-it-yourself spirituality. He loves tweaking existing elements in a room so that the space starts to contribute to the overall experience; for example bending tubelights so that they appear to sag.
This is also true of the works that have an origin in his studio, where “the mould” and the resulting negative is a classic sculptural principle De Jonghe often applies. He has a strong focus on the physical characteristics of his materials, stretching and moving them out of their usual form. Most of the works in ‘Long Story Short’ have come into existence by bending existing rough steel tubes or beams. Some of these have been combined with fragile natural components, such as the shells of snails or limpets. Others have received a coating of babypink paint. These unlikely marriages of materials poetically play with the idea of the ‘readymade’.
Bram De Jonghe (BE, 1985) graduated from Sint-Lucas in Ghent in 2009. He is based in The Hague, where he teaches sculpture at the Royal Academy of Art. Recent solo and duo exhibitions include ‘Wishbone’ at Kunsthal Ghent, ‘To take leave’ at DMW Gallery Antwerp, ‘Dehnung’ at Billytown The Hague, ‘A minor state of flux’ at Arti & Amicitiae Amsterdam, ‘En dat ook’ at 1646 The Hague, ‘Brushless Thoughts’ at Network Aalst, ’Grist to the mill’ at Stroom Den Haag. Recent group exhibitions include ‘Other.Worldly’ at Fries Museum Leeuwarden, ‘Een ongewone wandeling’ at GEM Museum of Contemporary Art The Hague, ‘Biennale van België III’ at Floraliënhal Ghent, ‘Dub Toasted Time’ at Gallery Martin Van Zomeren Amsterdam.
Work by De Jonghe is held in private and public collections, including the Fries Museum in Leeuwarden and the Ahold collection. In 2015 De Jonghe was recipient of the Volkskrant Visual Arts Prize. In 2022 he won the ‘Just a few seconds’ public commission from De Haagse Hogeschool to make a site-specific installation for their premises, less than 10 minutes’ walking distance from the gallery.
Reviews and features
Jegens en Tevens by Frits Dijcks
Villa Next Door by Albertus Pieters
19 Feb 2023 - 26 Mar 2023
Dürst Britt & Mayhew is proud to present the first solo exhibition in The Netherlands of Marwan Bassiouni’s ongoing series New British Views. In this project the artist captures the English landscape as framed by the windows of mosques and Islamic prayer rooms. Inspired by the long history of immigration in Britain following the country’s colonial past, Bassiouni spent time traveling across the UK to investigate how its landscape and architecture can be observed anew from the perspective of the religious sites of its Islamic communities. Through this journey, which echoes those undertaken by the artist in the Netherlands and Switzerland, Bassiouni challenges the stereotypes and clichés associated with the representation of Arab culture and Islamic religion within Western countries.
Bassiouni invites us to reconsider our viewpoints and questions the phenomenon of ‘othering’. In his New British Views one is confronted with an unexpected representation of Islamic communities in the West, one where similarities and common experience are in focus and beauty is found in the harmonious co-existence of different spaces and perspectives.
Although the photographs appear to be precisely composed, they are in fact documents of existing situations which have been carefully selected by the artist. Bassiouni uses multiple exposures in a single image, causing the foreground and background to appear equally focussed and creating an evenly distributed light. In doing so he eliminates the hierarchy between interior and exterior spaces, and also between the specific interiors of his images, known only to those who frequent these places of worship, and the exterior landscape that is shared by all.
Reviews and features
02 Dec 2022 - 05 Feb 2022
After Paul Beumer’s successful solo exhibition at Galeria GAM in Mexico City and presentations at Zona Maco and Art Cologne, a selection of his stunning kimono pieces is now being shown in The Netherlands for the first time.
Beumer is interested in researching the history and usage of fabrics and fibres within non-western cultures. To study these textile traditions he travels to far-flung places outside of Europe. For the past years Beumer has been living and working in China, Japan, Malaysia, Taiwan, Nigeria, and Sri Lanka. He currently resides in India.
For the exhibition ‘Born from the flow of colour feeling’ in the Frontspace at Dürst Britt & Mayhew Beumer has made use of kimonos, the traditional dress of Japan. These garments are still worn in formal ceremonies such as weddings, graduations and funerals: life events where an important transformation is celebrated. However, Beumer does not focus his attention on the decorative, elaborate and symbolic designs on the outside, but instead looks inside at the humble linings, which sometimes happen to have a monochrome strip along the borders. He collects these to create assemblages that continue his interest in the composition of a landscape, but which at the same time show beautiful parts of a garment that are normally hidden from view and only known to the owner, who wears the soft textile close to the skin. The works therefore not only reference a natural landscape but also the sensual lines of a bodily landscape. As the secondhand kimonos have been (visibly) used and worn, the works also interweave many unknown personal histories, creating both a choir of colours and of voices.
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. Recent solo and duo exhibitions include ‘As long as you know I am waiting, take your time flowers of the spring’ at GAM in Mexico City, ‘Frequently the woods are pink’ at Dürst Britt & Mayhew, ‘CONDO Mexico City’ at Proyecto Paralelo in Mexico City, ‘Paul Beumer & Willem Hussem’ at Museum Jan Cunen in Oss, ’New Seeds’ at 16by16 in Lagos, Nigeria, ‘Paint Wide Mouth White’ at Qingyun International Art Centre in Beijing, China. He participated in major group exhibitions at the 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 Museum De Domijnen, Sittard, the AKZO Nobel Art Foundation, Amsterdam; The Academic Medical Centre Art Collection, Amsterdam; the collection of the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, The Hague; the Collection of the District Court of Law, Amsterdam; the Rattan Chadha Collection, Voorschoten, Netherlands.
Essay
Click to read a specially commissioned essay by Guus van Engelshoven
Reviews and features
Villa Next Door by Albertus Pieters
03 Sep 2022 - 05 Feb 2023
Alexandre Lavet’s work constantly seems to hover on the verge of presence and disappearance. He plays with the apparent homogeneity of exhibition spaces to uncover the details that mark the uniqueness and specificity of each place. It is these particularities that Lavet wants to bring to light, thereby slowing down the viewers’ gaze and making them more aware of their surroundings.
For (､ﾝ､), his second solo exhibition at Dürst Britt & Mayhew Lavet proposed to relocate all the packed artworks from the gallery’s storage to the main exhibition space. By this intervention he allows the audience to enter an environment full of ‘sleeping’ artworks, a moment of stasis, and of anticipation of what is hiding in the crates and bubblewrap. The exhibition space has been darkened and in some places resembles the artist’s own bedroom: the walls have a similar colour and mouldings and even the cling on the entrance door has been replicated. Piles of literature about sleeping and rest are strewn throughout the space and the artist’s custom made pajamas are lying about. Drawings of cartoon characters at rest are placed on top of some of the artworks. When one listens carefully one can hear the muffled sounds of the outside world as if in a state between sleeping and waking, between dreaming and reality.
Alexandre Lavet (France,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 ‘When in Doubt, Go to a Museum’ at City Museum of Ljubljana, ‘Grand Salon’ at Centre d’Art Contemporain/Passages in Troyes, France, ‘Olaph the Oxman’ at Copperfield Gallery, London, ‘Vision’ at Palais de Tokyo in Paris, ‘Run Run Run’ at Villa Arson in Nice, and ‘The Context’ at Museum Flehite in Amersfoort, Netherlands. His work is held in private and public collections, including the moraes-barbosa collection in São Paulo, The EKARD collection and the Lisser Art Museum (LAM) in The Netherlands. Alexandre Lavet is living and working in Brussels.
Essay
Click to read a specially commissioned text by neither
Reviews and features
chmkoome’s blog by Kees Koomen
Villa Next Door by Bertus Pieters
03 Sep 2022 - 06 Nov 2022
In his artistic practice Polish artist Piotr Łakomy explores the relationship between the human body, architecture, and the environment. For his first solo exhibition in The Netherlands he will present a new series of intimate works, some of which contain silkworm cocoons.
Łakomy is known for using both organic and industrial materials in his work, often focusing on aluminum honeycomb – a material traditionally used in aerospace and construction industries – which he employs in a way that suggests natural formation. Apart from the formal properties of the honeycomb, Łakomy considers its cellular structure a pattern that symbolizes the potential for dwelling.
With the use of ostrich eggs, that often appear in his work, the artist refers to the sphere as a fundamental architectural form and as a shelter for life. For his solo exhibition at Dürst Britt & Mayhew he for the first time deploys a much smaller type of ’animal container’: silkworm cocoons. These are made of extremely long threads (1,5 to 3 km from a single thread) and are known for their special physical properties and great strength.
Piotr Łakomy (b.1983) lives and works in Poznań, Poland. Recent solo exhibitions were mounted at Le Creux de L’enfer, Thiers, France; Stereo, Warsaw; Simian, Copenhagen; Koenig 2, Vienna; SKALA, Poznań, Poland; Avant-Garde Institute, Warsaw; Centre for Contemporary Art FUTURA, Prague; The Sunday Painter, London. Selected group exhibitions include ‘The Living House’, Kunstverein Braunschweig, Germany; ‘Who Are We Are Who’, Braunsfelder Family Collection, Cologne; ‘Harvest the crust from your eyes’, Slash, San Francisco; ‘Metamorphosis. Art in Europe Now’, Foundation Cartier, Paris; ‘Orient’, Kim Contemporary Art Center, Riga, Latvia; ‘Half-Truth’, Xawery Dunikowski Museum of Sculpture, Warsaw; ‘Views Art Prize’, Deutsche Bank Foundation Award, Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw; ‘Private Settings’, Museum of Modern Art Warsaw.
Work by Łakomy is held in many private and public collections including the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Art Collection Telekom, Filiep Libeert collection and the Collezione Agovino.
Łakomy is represented by Galeria Stereo, Warsaw and The Sunday Painter, Londen, who have mounted various solo presentations in their galleries and at art fairs like LISTE Art Fair Basel; Art Basel Statements; Frieze New York; Paris Internationale.
We thank Galeria Stereo from Warsaw for their kind cooperation.
Essay
Click to read a specially commissioned essay by Jagna Lewandowska
Reviews and features
chmkoome’s blog by Kees Koomen
27 May 2022 - 24 Jul 2022
Lennart Lahuis’ third solo exhibition at Dürst Britt & Mayhew brings together three distinct bodies of works, in which present, past, and future appear to be collapsing into each other and different technological eras converge.
Firstly there is ‘Astromelancholia’, an astronomical clock that connects various contemporary images with the course of the planets in our solar system. The photographic images that are shown in relation to this clock are cut in four concentric circles and contain marks that make it possible to use them as functional dials from which astronomical information can be read when mounted on the mechanism. When attached to the clock the image will only return to its original starting position in 18,6 years. The clock is accompanied by a comprehensive manual prepared by graphic design studio Our Polite Society.
Three of the dials represent details from the strongest digital imaging sensor for astronomical purposes that has ever been developed. This sensor will find its home in the yet to be built Vera C. Rubin telescope on the Cerro Pachón ridge in North-Central Chile. This ‘camera’ will capture the largest and most detailed images of deepspace ever recorded.
In the middle of the exhibition space the viewer encounters an installation consisting of a water boiler, a vessel, a trashbin and a barrel. These various ‘containers’ produce words from water vapour that form the sentence “when is it / that we / feel change / in the air”. The words are only legible for a short time and then evaporate, after which the words are produced again. It conveys a feeling of writing with clouds, as well as commenting on the sudden and opaque shifts that continue to occur within our societies.
Additionally Lahuis realised various new ‘wax-works’, made with found photographic material from frames, printing equipment and/or calendars. These generic images are printed on the backboard of the frame and are subsequently covered with a layer of wax and paper on glass that is placed in front of the image. This specific material gesture suspends the immediate intelligibility of the images on view. They are frozen in a moment between appearance and disappearance, between absence and presence.
Lennart Lahuis received his BFA from Artez Institute of the Arts in Zwolle, Netherlands. From 2011 to 2013 he was a resident at De Ateliers in Amsterdam. Recent solo exhibitions include Those Hours That Have Lost Their Clock at Galeria Jaqueline Martins in Brussels, BE (2022); Constant Escapement at the Fries Museum in Leeuwarden, NL (2019); Land Slides at the National Museum of Ceramics Princessehof in Leeuwarden, NL (2019) and Le Mal du Pays at Dürst Britt & Mayhew Gallery in The Hague, NL (2019). Recent group exhibitions include Voorlopers at Park Paleis Soestdijk, NL (2022); In the Age of Post-Drought at CID Grand-Hornu in Boussu, BE (2021); CODA Paper Art at CODA Museum in Apeldoorn, NL (2021); When stones Awake at Platform POST in Nijmegen, NL (2021); Nabeeld at PARK in Tilburg, NL (2020); Common Ground at AKZO Nobel Art Foundation in Amsterdam, NL (2019); and Recent Acquisitions at Stedelijk Museum Schiedam, NL (2018).
In 2021 Lahuis won the FPT Sustainable Art Award in Turin, Italy and in 2015 the Royal Award for Contemporary Painting as well as the Piket Art Prize, both in the Netherlands.
Lennart Lahuis would like to thank Toine Daelmans for developing the technical components of Astromelancholia; Our Polite Society for designing the manual of Astromelancholia; and Mondriaan Fund for their generous support of his projects.
Essay
Click to read a specially commissioned essay by Tim Roerig
Reviews and features
De Witte Raaf by Daniël Rovers
Villa La Repubblica by Albertus Pieters
chmkoome’s blog by Kees Koomen
27 May 2022 - 24 Jul 2022
Shoeglazing brings together a ceramic body of work by ten artists in an exhibition that blends the vague borders between gallery space and high end storefront. On display are over 60 ceramic shoes, both individual and pairs. Shoeglazing features more and less recent work by Verena Blok, Dorota Jurczak, Michael Portnoy, Koen Taselaar, Ola Vasiljeva and new work by Kim David Bots, Caz Egelie, Afra Eisma, Arash Fakhim and guest curator Tim Hollander.
Starting as first a mental collection and later a slowly growing folder of snapshots of encountered shoes over the years, the exhibition zooms in on this medium within a medium and the shoe as a vessel for ideas, dreams and values. Some of the works allude to a feeling of home, others explore gender roles, capitalist fetishes and futures, or simply act as containers for larger sculptures. Whilst the shoestore-like scenography might suggest otherwise: these shoes are not just objects, and certainly weren’t made for walking.
Artist bio’s:
Verena Blok (1990, Netherlands) is a visual storyteller with a major fascination for people. She is interested in how people relate to each other and the influence that cultural developments have on an individual’s life. She is currently finishing her residency at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam, and her work was recently included in exhibitions at Het Rembrandthuis (2022), Noorderlicht Photo Festival (2020) and Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (2018).
Kim David Bots (1998, Netherlands) uses a large variety of materials to create installations that feature multiple narratives, characters and perspectives. His works have recently been shown at Unfair Amsterdam (2020), A-Dash Athens (2019) Marres in Maastricht (2017) and he was nominated for the Royal Prize of Painting multiple times.
Caz Egelie (1994, Netherlands) creates installations, performances, two-dimensional works and videos. In their multi-disciplinary body of work the visual vocabulary of the works is combined with Caz’ conceptual approach, and their appetite for theatre and performativity. They studied Fine Arts at the HKU in Utrecht and has recently exhibited and performed at CENTRALE Brussels (2021), Open Space London (2020) Centraal Museum Utrecht (2019) and Palais de Tokyo (2019).
Afra Eisma (1993, Netherlands) uses tufted carpets, ceramics, paper cache and textiles to create tactile and attractively colourful installations that focus on connection and generosity. Recent solo exhibitions include ‘Your Silence Will Not Protect You’ at the Fries Museum in Leeuwarden (2021), Kunstinstituut Melly in Rotterdam (2021) and 1646 in The Hague (2020). She was nominated for the Scheffer Prize in 2022 and the Royal Prize of Painting (NL) in 2018.
Arash Fakhim (1987, Iran) graduated from ArtEZ in 2016 and has an atypical approach to classic mediums like painting. His recent solo exhibition at Unfair’s Temporary Museum (2021) featured objects that were in between paintings, shelves and highly personal shrines. He recently exhibited at Patty Morgan (2020), No Man’s Art Gallery (2019), Collectie De Groen (2019) and Museum van Bommel van Dam (2017).
Tim Hollander (1987, Netherlands) works as an artist, curator and designer. Their work often focus on the production, presentation and handling of art. Recent artistic and curatorial projects have been shown at Museum IJsselstein (2021), Page Not Found (2021), Marres in Maastricht (2020) and Hotel Maria Kapel in Hoorn (2017). In 2016 they attended the Jan van Eyck academy in Maastricht.
Dorota Jurczak’s (1978, Poland) practice features macabre and fantastical works combine influences from folklore and mythology, along with inventions of her own imagination. The figures in her work are predominantly indebted to Eastern European iconography and exist in darkly whimsical dream-worlds. Recent solo exhibitions include the Bergen Kunsthall (2018), Künsterhaus Stuttgart (2017) and Culturgest Lisbon (2016)
Michael Portnoy (1971, USA) is a New York-based artist. Coming from a background in dance and stand-up comedy, his performance-based work employs a variety of media: from participatory installations to sculpture, painting, writing, theater, video and curation. He has presented internationally in museums, art galleries, theatres and music halls, including recently Vleeshal, Middelburg (NL) 2020; IFFR Rotterdam (NL), 2020; steirischer herbst, Graz (AT) 2018 and 2019; Witte de With, Rotterdam (NL) 2016; the Centre Pompidou, Paris (FR) 2015; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (NL) 2014
Koen Taselaar (1986, Netherlands) has a unique visual language and works in drawings, ceramics, textile and printmaking. Taselaar was nominated for the Volkskrant Beeldende Kunst Prijs in 2015, has attended numerous residencies and has recently exhibited at Museum Boijmans van Beuningen (2016), Centraal Museum Utrecht (2018), Page Not Found (2020) and Bienalsur Montevideo (2021).
Ola Vasiljeva (1981, Latvia) lives and works in The Hague. Ola Vasiljeva’s interdisciplinary practice includes sculptures, drawings, found and modified objects often referred to as ‘props’, as well as videos, slide shows, printed matter and poetry. She was nominated for the Prix de Rome in 2013 and has recently had solo shows at 427 Gallery in Riga (2021), Pori Art Museum in Finland (2020) and Kaiser Wilhelm Museum in Krefeld (2019).
Shoeglazing has been kindly supported by Gemeente Den Haag and Stroom Den Haag.
Essay
Click to read a specially commissioned essay by Helena Julian
Reviews and features
Metropolis M by Lotte van Geijn
Den Haag Centraal by Eline van der Haak
chmkoome’s blog by Kees Koomen
19 Mar 2022 - 08 May 2022
Rachel de Joode is well-known for mixing mediums, particularly those of photography, sculpture and most recently, painting. Her work bounces between the physical and the virtual, exploring the relationship between the three-dimensional object and its two dimensional-representation. De Joode’s work is a constant play between surface, representation and materiality.
For a series that premieres in her first solo exhibition at Dürst Britt & Mayhew, De Joode mounted prints on wooden panels – not only on the front, but also on he sides, mimicking the effect of a very flat canvas. Subsequently she made thick marks on the works by means of paint strokes that are applied in a frivolous way. This playfulness has been accentuated by using bright, cheerful bubble-gum-like colours. Several of these work are presented in a salon hanging, as if performing in a cheerful choir.
De Joode (1979, The Netherlands) earned her diploma in time-based art from the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam. She was awarded the Deutsche Börse Residency Program at the Frankfurter Kunstverein in Frankfurt (2013) and the Sculpture Space funded residency (2012), as well as a residency at LMCC swingspace program at Governors Island (2013 – 2014) in New York.
Her work has been included and reviewed in Vitamin C: Clay and Ceramics (Phaidon), Artforum, Artnet, The New York Times, The New Yorker, DIS magazine and Charlotte Cotton’s book Photography is Magic.
De Joode’s work has been exhibited at Centre Photographique, Marseille (2021); Annka Kultys Gallery, London (2020); The Pitcairn Museum of Contemporary Art, Groningen (2020); Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art (2019); Galerie Christophe Gaillard, Paris (2018); ZKM, Karlsruhe (2017); ICA, Philadelphia (2017); Kunstfort Vijfhuizen (2017); Kunstverein Nürnberg (2016); Dürst Britt & Mayhew, The Hague (2016); MACRO Contemporary Art Museum of Rome, Rome, (2015); Bergen Kunsthall (2012).
Work by de Joode is held in various private and public collections, including the Collection of Keramiek Museum Princessehof, Leeuwarden and the collection of the Amsterdam UMC.
Rachel de Joode would like to thank the Mondriaan Fund for their kind support and the Amsterdam UMC for kindly loaning a work from their collection.
Essay
Click to read a specially commissioned interview by Joost Bergman
Reviews and features
19 Mar 2022 - 08 May 2022
For her exhibition ‘Orca’ Maja Klaassens brings together a body of work consisting of painting, sculpture and installation. All works testify of the ephemeral nature of memory and the human desire to collect, record and store our memories.
Klaassens explores the way we isolate, edit, re-arrange, and save images and objects. These fragments (more easily than the whole) become props in semi-fictional or metafictional texts we ‘write’ in our own mind, as a response to experience and reality.
Her interest in writing as a kind of automatic internal mechanism reveals itself within the works in the show. Klaassens’ ‘grass’ paintings have been executed as if writing, concentrated at a desk, rose thorns on branches can be read like words on a line, and strips cut from a photograph of an orca fin are readable as both individual lines encased in glass, and a whole image.
Thorns and an orca fin can act as both a fragment and a pars pro toto, as what is missing continues to exist as a kind of ghost. To Klaassens, this is the same as how experiences remain as ghosts behind the fragments we extract from them and form into memories.
A black fin on a black reflective dinner table turns the surface of the table into the surface of the ocean, and resembling a large screen (the ultimate memory-storage), the table becomes the bottomless pit of the interface. The impression is uncanny, and encourages the viewer to fixate on the details of real and fabricated elements within one work.
The similar shape of the thorn and the fin emphasises the way threats and protection can occur together. Klaassens tries to find ways to show how recording memory can be both pleasant and anxious: leaving us questioning the missing parts of what happened in the grass, or at the dinner table.
Maja Klaassens (1989, New Zealand) obtained her BFA from the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague in 2014, and her MA in Contemporary Art History from the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in 2021. Recent group exhibitions include ‘After Daan van Golden’ at Parts Project and ‘RSVP’ at Billytown. In 2019 her work was shown at Poppositions in Brussels and she co-curated the group exhibition ‘Hinkypunk’ at Billytown. In 2020 she was awarded the Stroom PRO Research Grant.
Essay
Click here to read a specially commissioned text by Danica Pinteric
04 Dec 2021 - 06 Mar 2022
’Orienting Around’ brings together the work of Yeşim Akdeniz and Marwan Bassiouni. Both artists have their roots in Islamic and Arab cultures; Akdeniz was born in Turkey and Bassiouni’s father had the Egyptian nationality. Both countries belong to the so called “Orient,” a designation for countries in the near and far east about which Europeans have long held very stereotypical ideas. Even though Akdeniz and Bassiouni have a contrasting focus in their practice and their work has different visual manifestations, the works in this exhibition nevertheless intersect in various surprising ways.
Yeşim Akdeniz‘ work is concerned with Orientalism, gender and queer studies as well as cultural appropriation. Her work is infused with symbolic narratives that can be read as signs of cultural production, negotiation and appropriation. While she was primarily focused on painting, her most recent work consists of textile assemblages titled ‘selfportrait as an orientalist carpet’. These works combine autobiographical elements with (art)-historical narratives that position questions on identity formation along with ascriptions and self-attributions of objects as representations of political structures.
Yeşim Akdeniz (Turkey, 1978) studied at the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf (1998-2002) and at de Ateliers in Amsterdam (2002-2004). In 2005 she won the Peter Mertes Stipendium of the Bonner Kunstverein. Her work has been exhibited in institutions such as Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Kunstverein Frankfurt, MAK Museum Vienna and Sammlung Philara in Düsseldorf. Her work is held in private and public collections, including Deutsche Bank Collection, Sammlung Philara, Nederlandsche Bank Collection, Fries Museum and Achmea Collection. In 2017 Yeşim Akdeniz was appointed as professor at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. She lives and works in Brussels and Düsseldorf.
Marwan Bassiouni’s detailed photographs question how Islam is represented in the West, and show a society in which several cultures exist alongside and with each other. For his series ‘New Dutch Views’ he travelled through polders, along industrial estates, to villages, inner cities and suburbs to photograph the Dutch landscape from the windows of mosques. In the photos we see interiors, combined with the actual view that can be seen from the mosque. The works show the diversity of Islam in apparent contrast to the equally diverse and at the same time unmistakably Dutch landscape.
Marwan Bassiouni (Switzerland, 1985) holds a BA in photography from The Royal Academy of Art in The Hague and a photographer CFC from the Photography School of Vevey (CEPV). In 2019 he had a solo exhibition at The Hague Museum of Photography and published the book ‘New Dutch Views’. His work has been exhibited at Bienne Festival of Photography (CH), Photobastei /VFG prize, Zürich (CH), Sharjah Art Foundation (UAE), Circulation(s), Paris (FR), Fotomuseum Winterthur (CH), Aperture (USA), Paris Photo (FR), Athens Photo Festival (GR). A work from his ‘New Dutch Views’ series is currently included in the ‘Gallery of Honour of Dutch Photography’ at the Nederlands Fotomuseum in Rotterdam.
Work by Bassiouni is held in private and public collections, including the International Centre for Photography in New York, Kunstmuseum Bern, Nederlands Fotomuseum Rotterdam, Kunstmuseum Den Haag, Fenix Museum of Migration, Rotterdam, AEGON Art Collection, Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Amsterdam UMC. Bassiouni is the recipient of amongst others the W. Eugene Smith Student Grant, the Harry Pennings Prize, and the Prix Circulation(s)-Fujifilm. Bassiouni lives and works in Amsterdam.
Essay
Reviews and features
Den Haag Centraal by Eline van der Haak
Villa Next Door 2 by Albertus Pieters
04 Dec 2021 - 06 Mar 2022
Ultramarine blue is recognized as one of the most eminent colors in the history of painting. Although it has been widely available since 1826 due to the discovery of synthetic ultramarine, its specific color experience has long been inextricably linked to the rare and precious lapis lazuli stone from Sar-e-Sang. These mines in what is now called Afghanistan have been supplying the highest quality stone to an extensive trading network for over 6,000 years.
Pieter Paul Pothoven realized the work Consignor Consignee (2021) from lapis lazuli that he acquired in Kabul in 2009. The stones were shipped by the Dutch Embassy through Kamp Holland (ISAF) in Tarin Kowt, Uruzgan, to the naval base in Amsterdam. By grinding and separating the lapis lazuli based on the density and specific mass of lazurite, the mineral that gives the rock its sought after colour, the resulting pigments represent varying intensities of the very same material—from the precious ultramarine the Old Masters have worked with, to the grey-blue dust left behind in the mine shafts.
Like the stones, also the crate, in which they were transported, were reworked into supports for the different pigments. By processing, repackaging and shipping lapis lazuli anew as a series of artworks, Pothoven underlines the post-aesthetic condition of the pigments. More than just an immaterial colour experience with a range of meanings – the color of peace, virtue, the sacred, the infinite and the void – the variegated ultramarine blue of Consignor Consignee is also a carrier of pressing contexts. The dust which miners have been breathing in for thousands of years; foreign intervention in the country where the stone is mined; the Amsterdam shipyard, now a naval base, where VOC ships were once built: all these frameworks testify to an asymmetric distribution of labour, power and wealth, from which the arts too cannot escape.
Pieter Paul Pothoven’s practice consists of installation, photography and different forms of writing. Historiography in relation to material culture pervades all projects and connects them in both theoretical and visceral ways. He received his BFA at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam and his MFA at Parsons The New School for Design, New York (US). He was a resident at, amongst others, Instituto Sacatar, Itaparica (BR), Fine Arts Work Center, Provincetown, MA (US) and the Jan van Eyck, Maastricht (NL). Recent exhibitions include: In the Presence of Absence, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (NL); No you won’t be naming no buildings after me, TENT, Rotterdam, (NL); History is His Story, Nest, The Hague (NL); facade suspended, Dürst Britt & Mayhew, The Hague (NL); You Talkin’ to me?, Barbara Seiler, Zürich (CH); Listen to the Stones, think like a mountain, Tatjana Pieters, Ghent (BE); Lapis Lazuli from Serr-i-Sang, PuntWG, Amsterdam (NL); 11:59, Hudson D. Walker gallery, Provincetown (US); The Intelligence of Things, The Kitchen, New York (US). 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. Pieter Paul Pothoven lives and works in Amsterdam.
This work has been made possible with the generous support of the Mondriaan Fund and the Faculty of Science, Geology and Geochemistry (VU University, Amsterdam), with a special thanks to Roel van Elsas.
Reviews and features
Mister Motley by Barbara Collé
Villa Next Door 2 by Albertus Pieters