Alejandra Venegas, Willem Hussem: Frontspace: my shadow chases the butterfly to another flower

The duo exhibition ‘my shadow chases the butterfly to another flower’ presents a transhistorical dialogue between recent woodcarvings by Alejandra Venegas and woodcuts from 1924 by Willem Hussem (1900-1974).

 Alejandra Venegas hand carves landscape scenes and natural motives from various sorts of wood native to Mexico, after which she colours them with gouache or oil. Uniting the natural, warm tones of the wood with stridently bright shades is a contrast she actively seeks for. Incorporating the natural irregularities of the wood makes it much more than just a panel to paint on and gives the work a definite sculptural character. For Venegas, these works have therefore become a meeting place between painting, sculpture and drawing, but also between nature and culture, the exterior and the interior.

 Willem Hussem is commonly known as a modernist painter and poet, but the first half of his life he worked in a figurative way. In 1924 he experimented with a style that could be described as stylised symbolism. This resulted in a series of woodcuts that mainly depict abstracted floral and landscape motives. Several of these illustrated the poetry publication ‘Zilveren Paarden’ by Hussem’s childhood friend Hugo van Mens and were presented the same year by Haarlem-based art dealer De Bois. Because this series remained the only time Hussem engaged in abstraction until 1936, it can be considered as a unique preliminary to his later work.

This show is the first iteration of a series of presentations in which Dürst Britt & Mayhew highlights  the occasion of 50 years having passed since Willem Hussem’s death. In the first half of 2024 we will exhibit his work at TEFAF Maastricht, Vitrine Bermondsey in London and Billytown in The Hague, followed by a soloshow in the gallery.