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For the eighth year in a row, the NN Art Award will be awarded to a promising artist who completed their studies at an art academy in the Netherlands and is exhibiting at Art Rotterdam. This year, for the first time, the nominees will exhibit their work in the prestigious Kunsthal Rotterdam, from 1 February to 14 April 2024. The nominated artists for the NN Art Award 2024 are Maaike Kramer (Art Gallery O-68), Mónica Mays (Prospects section of the Mondriaan Fund), Jan van der Pol (CREMAN & DE ROOIJ) and Peim van der Sloot (Brinkman & Bergsma).
Dutch artist Jan van der Pol is intrigued by the dynamic interaction between our eyes and our brain when we perceive images. His work is inspired by urban and industrial landscapes, as well as literature and news images. This can result in figurative works or abstract pieces with figurative elements, but in his more recent work, the artist increasingly leans towards abstract and quasi-geometric pieces in a myriad of colours. Since the 1980s, Van der Pol has been compiling a kind of visual diary, consisting of his daily drawings and watercolours. Van der Pol says, “These books often have a central theme and can be seen as works that, due to their form, resemble Chinese scroll drawings, which cannot be comprehended in a single glance. By unrolling them on one end and rolling them up on the other, it gradually reveals small parts to the viewer, so that they can assemble the whole image in their minds.”
The 74-year-old artist was educated at the Rietveld Academy and the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam.
Could you tell us more about the work you will be presenting at Kunsthal Rotterdam?
The works that I will present in the Kunsthal consist of two parts: two large drawings and three small, recent oil paintings. The drawings were made in 2021 and are titled “A Walk of Life”. They all consist of a single line that can be interpreted as a metaphor: where the line begins, viewers can see birth, and at the end of that line, it leads them off the paper — greeted by the Grim Reaper. As for the oil paintings, I can’t say much; I can only recommend that viewers approach them with an open mind, take things in slowly, and perhaps contemplate what they have seen afterwards.
What are your plans for 2024? What are you currently working on?
My plans for 2024 are not very concrete, except for the desire to spend as much time as possible in my studio. Additionally, I have plans for new publications. I view publications as part of my output, and I try to add something to them at regular intervals. In the near future, there will be a publication featuring a coherent series of 26 drawings titled “The Comfort Zone of the Stoic”. It will be the fifth publication in the “A NEW DAY” series.
What is your primary source of inspiration?
If one can speak of sources of inspiration — I generally don’t like to use the word “inspiration” — it might be the incredible complexity of the world and our relationship to it as human beings.
What advice would you like to offer to the new generation of artists?
I taught at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague for 25 years. Conversations with students were occasionally fantastic, but ultimately, everyone has to figure it out for themselves. And that’s often very enjoyable. Sometimes, there’s a bonus, like being nominated for an award like this, which turns out to be a particularly pleasant surprise.
The winner of the NN Art Award will be announced in the Kunsthal Rotterdam on Thursday 1 February at 20:00 CET. The work of the nominees will be on display there until 14 April 2024. Jan van der Pol’s work will also be exhibited at the CREMAN & DE ROOIJ booth during Art Rotterdam.
Written by Flor Linckens
Sam Hersbach about the importance of meeting rooms and skirting-boards for his practice
“There is increasingly more reality in my paintings,” says Sam Hersbach, the painter who gained recognition for works of art featuring dragons and aliens. His presentation at Prospects is based on the meeting room of the Mondriaan Fund. The Distribution Hall where Prospects takes place also appears in one of his works. These two spaces are significant for his artistic practice. As can be expected from Hersbach, he manipulates these spaces and shadows and plants take over the canvases. Hersbach also adds a plinth beneath his work, which he believes adds an extra layer of information and imagination to the overall piece.
Congratulations on your presentation at Prospects. What can we expect?
Thank you very much! For Prospects, I am showcasing a series of paintings and an engraved plinth. I have copied the meeting room of the Mondriaan Fund and also done a painting of the Prospects exhibition space at the Van Nelle factory, which is depicted using a digital three-dimensional sketch from the architectural firm before the space was finished. I have also made a painting combining these spaces with imaginative creatures, realistic self-portraits, varying scales – sometimes on a scale of 1 cm, other times 10 kilometres – images I’ve photographed of a wild sea and drawings of drones, periscopes, mosquitoes and other animals. I used homemade pigments, such as dried flowers from my studio building’s garden, weeds from my street or plants that form a connection with the painted space. There is also a plinth engraved with drawings and texts beneath the work to integrate it more into the space itself, an extra layer for communication, representation and imagination as it were.
Why did you decide to paint a meeting room?
Normally, my work starts with a concept and develops through different layers of fantasy and reality: drones, submarines, deep-sea creatures, lost people amidst alien-like mega butterflies, and so on. With the series of meeting rooms, the starting point is an existing space, one that is important for my artistry and exhibitions. My studio space, exhibition spaces – each has its own story. These spaces transform: beings walk through them and shadows and plants take over the canvas. They reference influential environments, either for me or art in general. The meeting room has been essential in my process towards exhibiting at Prospects and is essential for my participation in the exhibition. This is also the last time Prospects will be held at the Van Nelle factory, so it’s a space that has served as a stage for many people.
You now also create work on plinths. Painters typically want to make larger canvases, but this is an unassuming surface. How did you come up with this idea?
The plinths originated from the murals I created a few times. I was asked to explore new supports to tell stories. A mural is already more connected to architecture than a conventional painting because it blends into the space. A plinth is a natural progression. On a plinth, you can write source references, show sketches or engrave titles. Compared to a conventional painting, a plinth is a much less dominant support. It’s also a way to add an extra layer of information and ‘fantasy’ to the whole.
A recurring theme in your work is power imbalances and human hubris in technological developments. Does that still play a role in your most recent work?
My work has evolved over the years and explored multiple themes. Technological developments, like the Dutch-acquired Reaper Q9 drones for submarines and genetically modified mosquitoes, appear in my works. The paint itself plays a crucial role. The emotion in the paint and brushstroke, the play of light with colour and the chosen pigments engage in a dialogue with the underlying narratives. Between the plinth and conventional painting, there is also a power dynamic of information delivery and tradition in art. The tradition of an isolated canvas in a space, the white cube idea of art, stands in contrast to an element that blends more into the space.
I’m also wondering whether the emphasis on power dynamics conceals a broader story you wish to tell?
The work has layers of fantasy and layers of reality, from conventional fantasy figures to figures inspired by reality. In each exhibition, the works vary, from mountain landscapes that don’t exist to work that relates to the exhibition space or award. To give an example, for the Ary Scheffer Prize (together with Afra Eisma and Niek Hendrix) at the Dordrechts Museum, I created work about Ary Scheffer’s mother, Cornelia Scheffer-Lamme. She was a fantastic artist, but unfortunately is much less famous than her son. I had the honour and good fortune to create work about her and her son in tribute to Cornelia Scheffer-Lamme’s work and motherhood/parenthood in general. I also had the opportunity to select work from the depot and hang it next to mine to curate an exhibition.
What also characterises your work is a certain relativising humour. Why is that? My work is like a comedy, serious yet humorous. It is chaos hidden behind cheerful scenes, pleasant colours with anxious figures. There must be balance in the works, which should be simultaneously accessible yet repulsive.
I think your visual language has become more concrete and ‘everyday’ in recent years. Previously, a dragon might appear in your work, but the canvases I saw this summer including such things as Andre Hazes and a FaceTime conversation. Do you agree with this observation and is there a reason that you now paint more everyday subjects?
There is increasingly more reality in my paintings, ranging from self-portraits and historical figures to photos of my studio and other real-life inspirational elements. Andre Hazes was originally created for an exhibition honouring a transporter who was a huge Hazes fan. I painted Hazes, who is half mountain and directs his microphone towards the universe, as if he wants to record space sounds – sounds from the vast universe, far away from our small planet.
Last year, you received a grant from the Mondriaan Fund. Is there a project you were able to carry out through the grant that you wouldn’t have been able to do otherwise?
As an artist, I always have the drive to create work with the means I have, but the Start grant from the Mondriaan Fund gave me the freedom to work on projects. It helped with purchasing materials, connecting with other artists through the events they organise and with visibility at the Prospects exhibition. Additionally, writing a grant application helps you focus on your work in a different way, attempting to establish its essence. This grant helped me tremendously and has been essential in my research and development.
You’re now 28 and already have the Royal Award for Free Painting, have completed the Ateliers and received a grant from the Mondriaan Fund. What are your plans for the next five years?
I am focusing on further improving the content of my work with even more homemade pigments and other materials. I am also aiming for internationalisation, applying for residencies and to participate in exhibitions in other countries. What I learned at the Ateliers is that you can learn so much from people from around the world. It was fantastic to meet not only different tutors, but also fellow participants. Every art world is different, just like every history and discourse. That’s why I want to showcase my work in different contexts and let it grow by learning from different people and locations.
Written by Wouter van den Eijkel
At the 2024 edition of Art Rotterdam, Migrant Bird Space, an art foundation and gallery based in Berlin and Beijing, is presenting the work of Luo Yang. She was born in the 1980s in the Liaoning Province in China and her work is a unique combination of carefully staged portraits with a raw, blurry, snapshot-like aesthetic. These photos reveal the strength, vulnerability, and inner life of her subjects, mostly young people growing up in a rapidly changing China. She portrays these young individuals in such a way that highlights that what makes them unique — their style, appearance, tattoos, quirky gaze, or personality. For the artist, this deep dive into the lives of others is also a way to better understand her own life. For that reason, her work has both an autobiographical and a societal aspect, reflecting a kind of local universality within the context of China. Some people, including her friends, she has followed for a long time, showing a certain evolution or growth — a growth that mirrors her own. Additionally, she immortalises friends of friends, strangers she encounters on the street, or people she meets on the internet.
In her ongoing central series “GIRLS” (2017-), Yang captures the nuances and complexity of being a woman in contemporary China, exploring themes such as youth, the naked body, and femininity. She photographs women from different generations and backgrounds. These women are vulnerable yet self-aware and innately cool. Together, they embody a culture that deviates from dominant conservative expectations and stereotypes. It’s important to note that her intention is not to incorporate Western expectations. In the West, for instance, Chinese art is often viewed through a Western gaze, based on certain ideas about what China and its people look like. In a 2018 interview with METAL Magazine, the artist noted that “people in China see my photos as an honest record of girls’ lives, simple as they are. Whereas in the West, my works are inevitably interpreted from a political or feminist perspective, neither of which is my intention.” At the same time, her photos also show a rawer and less polished image than, for example, the K-pop stars who are popular worldwide, including in China. In 2017, ten years after starting the series, Yang published the monograph GIRLS.
Characteristic of Yang’s work is her ability to build an intimate bond with her subjects. This connection and empathy are clearly visible in her sensitive photos, where models often look directly into the camera: a direct, candid, and almost reciprocal exchange between subject and photographer. Her characters are often nude, but this is not something the photographer asks or requires of her subjects. Rather, it’s the natural result of the trust that develops between the photographer and the person she captures. This is further reinforced by the fact that these people are often photographed at home or in another familiar place.
Yang uses photography as a means to capture shared emotions, worries and life experiences, imbuing her images with an ambiguous depth that is not immediately discernible. In a 2016 interview with IGNANT, Yang stated that “by shooting them, I understood their life better and it made my own world bigger and wider. We might have different values and world views, but what we have in common are a fragility and braveness inside of us. We face the world with our sincerity.”
In her more recent series “Youth” (2019-), Yang focuses on younger generations growing up in a globalizing (and even faster-changing) China. In this series, she explores gender, identity, and the personal growth of people born in the 1990s and early 2000s. Yang’s portraits offer a rare glimpse into the inner lives of these young people: not just young women, but also young men, and young gender-fluid and transgender people. In doing so, she questions prevailing gender norms and highlights a certain diversity among young Chinese people.
Yang studied graphic design at the Lu Xun Academy of Fine Arts in Shenyang. In 2022, she started the Cité internationale des Arts residency program in Paris. Yang divides her time between China and Europe and has exhibited her work all over the world. In 2012 she was praised by none other than Ai Weiwei as one of the “rising stars of Chinese photography” (in an interview with Statesmen). Shortly thereafter, Yang displayed her work in his group exhibition ‘FUCK OFF 2’ (2013) at the Groninger Museum in the Netherlands. In 2018, she was included in the BBC’s ‘100 WOMEN’ list, and a year later she was nominated for a C/O Berlin Talent Award and won a Jimei x Arles Women Photographer’s Award. Currently, her work is on display in the ‘NUDE’ exhibition at Fotografiska in Berlin.
During Art Rotterdam, Luo Yang’s work is presented by Migrant Bird Space in the Solo/Duo section.
Written by Flor Linckens
From figurative to abstract and back again: it’s not a journey that many artists take. Dutch artist Mirthe Klück doesn’t see a significant distinction between the two and creates both abstract paintings and sculptures. “In the end, you’re looking at glued-together bits that evoke a feeling or thought, whether cast in a recognisable figure or not.” This has resulted in a versatile body of work based on Klück’s idiosyncratic observations of everyday things. From a gummy bear and spit-out piece of chewing gum to the wrapper of a chocolate Easter bunny, she explores how layers of matter interact to create a surface that feels both familiar and strange. At Art Rotterdam, FRED&FERRY Gallery is presenting an overview of Mirthe Klück’s work.
Congratulations on your presentation at Art Rotterdam. What can we expect?
Thank you! I’m excited to showcase a comprehensive overview of my work at an exhibition with FRED&FERRY Gallery. I’ll be presenting a combination of more abstract paintings and figurative ceramic sculptures. They all incorporate recognisable motifs and materials from my daily life, transformed into something wondrous and alien based on my own interpretation. I’m guided by painting techniques and ceramic glazes that I find interesting for formal reasons, making the creation journey of the image of intrinsic importance.
What kinds of recognisable motifs and materials are you referring to?
The ceramic sculptures, for instance, are enlargements of a gummy bear and chewed pieces of gum. When I saw a pink spit-out piece of gum on a rosy marble sculpture in Italy last year, I suddenly saw the sculptural qualities of such a form. Chewing gum essentially creates a mould of your teeth. In my paintings, I choose textile materials like curtains, carpet backing and sunscreens as supports. I sometimes add almost nothing to a fabric, but incorporate it by tearing it and creating a composition or simply by stretching it. This may sound inconsistent, but in all these works, I explore how layers of matter interact to create a surface that feels both familiar and strange.
Do you consider this presentation a logical continuation of your previous work or have you embarked on a new path?
This presentation is in fact a continuation of my solo exhibition Moon White Rabbit, which I presented at FRED&FERRY at the end of 2021, which was the first time I showcased both paintings and ceramics. For years, I’ve been creating two-dimensional work that responds to the medium of painting. My first ceramic sculpture, Blue Moon (2021), originates from such a conceptual work, specifically the silkscreen on aluminium foil I’ll be Your Mirror (2018), for which I enlarged a package featuring a Easter bunny that is painting.
The sculpture is an enlargement of the chocolate itself. I found ceramics appropriate due to the similar properties of chocolate and casting clay, such as their creaminess and how easily they transition between liquid and solid phases. The title refers to the glaze: the blueish green Jun glaze is a type of celadon that in China referred to jade stone and The Jade Hare is folklore based on moon markings resembling a rabbit.
The Jun glaze is said to have molecules similar to those causing the Rayleigh scattering in the air, making our sky appear infinitely blue. This brings the glaze closer to the natural phenomenon than paint alone can mimic. Last winter, during a residency at the EKWC, I began focusing more on ceramics. This process resulted in several sculptures that I will be presenting at Art Rotterdam, along with paintings influenced by this process.
Out of curiosity: you initially worked abstractly and later also figuratively. Normally, this is a significant shift in someone’s work, but I imagine that for you, the difference between abstract and figurative isn’t that considerable. Is that correct?
Yes, that’s correct. I don’t see a fundamental difference. In the end, you’re looking at glued-together bits that evoke a feeling or thought, whether cast in a recognisable figure or not. I use figuration more to introduce certain shapes, colours and associations. All the same, I am selective about which figures I use because it should provide just enough without becoming narrative or expressive.
Most people may know your work from Horses in 2021, featuring photos of the equestrian jumping event at the 2012 Olympics. You didn’t take the pictures in the stadium, but in front of the TV with your phone. How did this idea come about? Why did you decide to approach it this way rather than choosing stills from a recording?
The idea came about very intuitively. I simply grabbed my phone while watching the Olympic Games on a lazy summer day, curious to see if I could capture one of those floating horses over those artistic obstacles with all those graphic logos in the corners of the screen. Then I saw that my phone rendered it beautifully. The saturation of colours and selective focus made them resemble contemporary impressionistic miniature paintings, reminding me of Muybridge, Degas, cowboy comics and games like Zoo Tycoon. They also emphasise the absurdity of such an event. Somewhere in the world, horses have to jump over artificial obstacles in a very staged environment. This is captured by various equipment, transmitted via satellites to our TV screens in a live broadcast to give us a feeling of being there.
Since 2012, this trend of experiencing things through screens has only intensified. By taking the photos and printing them in a book, I add more layers to my subjective experience. It was actually quite challenging to reproduce the aesthetic quality of my glowing phone screen on paper. So, the pages of the book consist of digitally developed photos because c-prints also use the RGB colour scheme and layers of chemicals create the colour. Quite similar to a painting or ceramic glaze.
You have a keen eye for seemingly insignificant details and your work has a certain lightness/humour to it, which is why it is sometimes compared to that of Daan van Golden. Is he one of your influences? Who are others?
Yes, Daan van Golden has been my greatest influence after leaving his exhibition at GEM in 2014 feeling very happy. I thought, if art can evoke this feeling, I hope my work can do the same for someone else someday. There are various artistic practices and works that I appreciate, such as those of Lily van der Stokker and Klaas Kloosterboer, but I haven’t come across an artist to whom I feel as connected as to Daan van Golden. It’s mainly because of the feeling I get from his work, although I can’t explain it in simple terms. It’s a basic sense of understanding. I must admit I’ve somewhat let go of this fascination, or perhaps obsession, in the past few years because I need to move forward with my own life. But I think we have a similar way of perceiving things.
Others must notice the playfulness in your work. What is the best compliment you’ve ever received about your work?
Well, it’s hard to choose the best one. Personally, I really appreciate receiving compliments from other artists or when people develop a kind of personal connection with my work. They don’t necessarily have to have it hanging on their wall at home. For instance, someone I didn’t know at the time showed me that he had a painting of mine as a screensaver on his phone. But it’s always interesting and funny to see how people react to my work. I often hear that people want to touch it, even though that is not my intention.
What are you currently working on?
In January, I’m be curating a group exhibition at FRED&FERRY in Antwerp called Mountain Friends. For this exhibition, I’m selecting specific works by Daniele Formica, Kaï-Chun Chang, Maja Klaassens and Nishiko, which resonate with my work. All these works are poetic translations of everyday objects and elements. Broadly speaking, this exhibition is about the illusory difference between what is natural and artificial. I’m also preparing for a residency I’ll be doing in the summer – the Creative Residency Arita in Japan – thanks to the support of the Mondriaan Fonds. The village of Arita is internationally known for its expertise in porcelain, a material that is very challenging to work with. I’m really looking forward to this. Right now, I’m trying to learn some Japanese and am busy implementing the ceramic techniques I learned at the EKWC into my studio. After January, I’ll delve into more theoretical research on Japanese culture and ceramics.
Written by Wouter van den Eijkel
Interview with Filipp Groubnov
Eight years ago, Filipp Groubnov moved from Belarus to the Netherlands. At the Royal Academy in The Hague he discovered that he could express many of his interests in installations. He prefers to be in the border area of various artistic and scientific disciplines. “There I find space for my own story and the opportunity to discuss all kinds of questions that occupy me. There are simply too many things that inspire me to put them in a single system.” This also applies to his visual language, which is a unique mix of figuration and abstraction, although according to Groubnov this is ultimately a matter of scale. His work is shown at Art Rotterdam by Josilda da Conceição.
Let’s start at the beginning. Before studying fine arts, you studied physics. What made you switch?
Even before studying fine arts, I was very interested in art. I have always been involved in some sort of creative activity, from graffiti to drawing and painting. I think the main reason why I didn’t choose to study art initially was because I didn’t know anyone who followed that route and, at the time in Belarus, I didn’t really consider an art career as a possibility. On the other hand, I was interested in science and I imagined studying physics as a kind of creative process, too. But one year into the programme, I realised that it was very formal and uninspiring. At some point, I simply couldn’t do it any longer and that’s when I decided to switch.
You moved from Belarus to the Netherlands in 2015. What kind of work were you making at the time?
When I moved to the Netherlands in 2015, I wasn’t very familiar with contemporary art. In fact, I was barely familiar with contemporary art at all because it isn’t well represented in Belarus. At the time, there was only one gallery that showed contemporary art in Minsk and I also lacked a context to truly understand it. I was mostly influenced by early 20th and 19th century styles like Impressionism and Surrealism, and was mostly focused on painting and drawing.
Would you say there’s a different approach to art here than in Belarus? If so, was it hard to get used to?
It was definitely hard to get used to the idea of ‘contemporary art’ and what it entails. I often struggled to understand what the teachers expected from me and was also missing a huge number of cultural references since around the 60s. So, it definitely took some time to catch up, but I feel like it also gave me a unique, almost ‘outsider’ perspective to contemporary art.
Your work isn’t political in nature. Given the mass protests after the 2020 general elections in Belarus and the war in Ukraine, as well as the role of Belarus in this, I can’t help but wonder if it is hard to stay away from politics in your work?
For a long time, I’ve had this idea that I wanted to stay away from ‘politics’ in my work, but this is changing, especially due to the events that you mention. I think that I no longer consider ‘political’ as something separate from other facets of life. It is just part of the condition that shapes many complex relationships between human, matter, mind, etc. In my last work, for example, my personal story and the current situation in Ukraine becomes part of the narrative and an essential element of the project.
I’ve read that you started out by painting on canvass. Today, you primarily make installations. What happened along the way?
That’s right, my more ‘conscious’ artistic journey started with canvas and oils. The switch to sculptural installations happened while studying in the Netherlands. I was enrolled in a course on ‘expanded sculpture’, which inspired me to experiment with installation and different media. You might say it opened my eyes to the fact that sculpture and installation can be so many different things. I then began to be aware of all the possibilities to combine materials, images and sounds. I slowly starting realising that in the field on installations, I can combine all my interests in one. To this day, I am in awe of all the possibilities of installations. I still feel like I have only scraped the surface of this discipline.
What would you say is the main theme of your work?
I think an essential (central?) theme of my work is to reject the idea of a ‘main theme’. My interest is in multiplicity and approaching any subject as a kind of choir of detuned, human and non-human, living and non-living voices. What I choose to talk about changes from one project to the other, but what stays the same is my approach to positioning things like personal emotions and narratives in the same ensemble as, for example, the erosion produced by water passing through the landscape. Right now, I am quite fascinated by the subject of war and violence, but it is really through the relationships and interactions I create between the story and different materials that the subject unfolds in front of me and takes on all the complex facets that bring it to life.
Your installations have a mix of abstract and figurative elements. How did you arrive at this visual language?
This developed very organically. I think because, on one hand, I am interested in rather ‘abstract’ concepts like those found in physics and science and, on the other hand, I am also very interested in personal and concrete experiences. Ultimately, my approach is that there is no absolute distinction between what can be called ‘abstract’ and ‘figurative’. In physics, for example, we can imagine ‘particles’, which are described in classical physics as discrete concrete entities. But, if we consider the very small scale described in quantum physics, these particles are more like a very abstract ‘field’ without any clear boundaries. So, figurative or abstract may merely be a matter of scale.
How do you go about assembling your installations? Do you have a preconceived idea and then find the right attributes or do you work with whatever happens to be around?
Every installation is a combination of the two. I like to juxtapose some very meticulously crafted elements with ready-made and sometimes more ‘random’ objects that I find. For example, in the installation The Garden of Iarthly Delights, I have placed together a sculptural head of Narges Mohammadi with construction material from a shop. While the construction material was something you can easily buy ready-made, the head on the other hand was a result of a long process of 3D-scanning Narges, 3D-printing the model, casting it, etc. I find the combination of deliberate and spontaneous actions very enriching for the work.
Some of your work has titles that refer to philosophy and biology, such as Natural Philosophy and The Garden of larthly Delights. Are philosophy and biology the main sources of inspiration for you?
In a way, yes, but I think that ‘philosophy’ and ‘biology’ sound so formal. Both of these disciplines are a way of studying phenomena, a systematic approach to research and communication. I am mostly interested in researching areas where these systems start to lose their solid foundation. Within the blurry boundaries of disciplines and systems, I find space for my own story and all kinds of questions that intrigue me. But at the end of the day, there are too many things that inspire me to put them in a single system.
Your installation The Garden of larthly Delights contained living species. I can imagine it can be hard to display in a presentation. So, why do it?
Yes, you are very right. Working with living organism is quite challenging within the context of art exhibitions, which are normally geared towards a different kind of art experience. Most art (or, more specifically, fine art) spaces have a tradition that is based on art objects being static, inanimate ‘beings’. In that context, presenting a living creature requires a completely different set of rules. I find that tension very interesting and it opens up new ways of thinking about art as active participants in the space.
Congratulations on your presentation at Art Rotterdam! What can we expect?
Thank you! Currently, I am working on a project in collaboration with Highlight Delft festival and New Media Center of TU Delft. It revolves around the subject of war and the area of France where the ‘Great War’ left a lasting mark on the landscape. You can expect to see new work with a combination of a digital post-war environment shown on screens and physical sculptural elements. I don’t want to reveal too much because, as a visual artist, I always believe it is better to see for yourself than to hear an explanation. I am also experimenting with glass paintings that might find their way into the final presentation.
Right now, you are at the start of your career. What do you hope to have achieved in the next five years?
There are a lot of things I want to achieve or get involved with. I really hope to participate in residencies that can give me a chance to work with researchers or scientific institutions. I am very interested in interdisciplinary collaboration and, right now, one of my main goals is to establish such partnerships. I would also really like to present my work in more international venues. I have interacted with Dutch audiences for some time now and I am very curious to see how people from other countries and cultural backgrounds interact with my work. I think that would teach me a lot.
Written by Wouter van den Eijkel
AKINCI will present work by Lungiswa Gqunta at Art Rotterdam. In her practice, the South African artist explores the elusive world of dreams. She sees these dreams as a place where important knowledge can be gained that is overlooked or excluded in other places. Her work was recently on display at the Liverpool Biennial, at the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Turin and at the Centraal Museum in Utrecht and earlier this year, she was invited to submit a proposal for the famous High Line in New York.
In her multidisciplinary practice, which includes performance, installation, sculpture and printmaking, she draws attention to the complex and ongoing ways in which colonialism and patriarchy shape South Africa’s contemporary political, cultural and social landscape — and continues to create systematic inequality until this day. She highlights, among other things, African systems of knowledge and belief that were structurally excluded during the apartheid regime.
In her most recent work, Gqunta explores the concept of sleep and dreams on the basis of her Xhosa heritage. Dreams function as a connection with her ancestors and are a place where knowledge can be gained. Her multi-sensory and layered work is informed by this dream world and explores themes such as landscape, violence, resistance, collective healing, identity, female power, the domestic space, traditions and rituals, history and collective memory, privilege, globalisation and capitalism. Recurring materials in her work are materials that could also serve as a weapon in a different context or form, such as glass, concrete, barbed wire and more specifically: the more aggressive razor wire. They are symbolic and emotionally charged materials that refer to the townships, which were reserved for the black inhabitants of South Africa during apartheid. Gqunta also regularly uses white sheets in her works, which refer to a recognisable ritual: the processing of the laundry and the folding of the sheets, traditionally a moment when knowledge was shared between the female members of her family, but at the same time a potential moment for secret talks and resistance during apartheid.
Her recent solo exhibition ‘Sleep in Witness’, that was on display at AKINCI this autumn, was previously presented in a different form at the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds. In both exhibitions, part of the floor was covered with cracked clay and sand, carefully shaped by the artist’s feet. As a viewer, you were forced to walk over it in order to enter the exhibition, which made the instability under your feet tangible. In combination with blue structures of transparent, hand-blown glass — reminiscent of rocks or water — they formed the site-specific installation “Zinodaka”. The video work “Rolling Mountains Dream” in the exhibition referred to remembering and learning from dreams. And the works “Instigation in Waiting I & II” referred to the ways in which colonial oppressors introduced new plant species and removed existing ones as a way of controlling the environment, a tradition that lives on in a different form in conservatories and botanic gardens.
Her room-filling installation “Ntabamanzi”, which consists of wave-like barbed wire wrapped in bright blue fabric, was on show in the Centraal Museum this summer. The large-scale work refers to the reclaiming of healing water rituals that were prohobited during the apartheid regime, but it also challenges the viewer to think about freedom of movement in a space — and how that is not as self-evident for everyone. The name is a combination of two Xhosa words: ntaba (mountain) and manzi (water) and the installation was born in a dream of the artist. Gqunta then worked for months on the execution of the work, after which only the sharp parts still portrude.
Gqunta isn’t afraid to ruffle some feathers and creates installations that cause discomfort and confrontation in white viewers, while other works offer care of the mental health of black viewers. She feels that it’s important to have certain conversations, no matter how uncomfortable they may be. In a video for the Henry Moore Institute, she states: “I think of it as like trapping someone into a conversation. No one’s gonna go willingly to a place that is difficult, that is hard, and so you gotta reel them in. The aim is for the work to follow people home somehow. To haunt them. [Some of my other] installations are I guess the complete opposite, where it’s about rest and recharging.”
Gqunta studied sculpture at Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in Port Elizabeth, followed by a master’s degree at the Michaelis School of Fine Arts in Cape Town. She completed residencies at the prestigious Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam, Gasworks in London and Dumbarton Oaks in Washington DC, a research institute, library and museum affiliated with Harvard University. She currently lives and works in Cape Town. Her work has been shown in the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, during Manifesta 12 and the Istanbul Biennale and has been included in the collections of institutions such as KADIST in Paris, the Kunsthaus Museum in Zurich, the Centraal Museum in Utrecht and Zeitz MOCAA – Cape Town Museum of Contemporary Art.
Written by Flor Linckens
At Art Rotterdam, you will spot the work of hundreds of artists from all over the world. In this series, we highlight a number of artists who will show remarkable work during the fair.
Last December, the Belgian newspaper De Morgen presented a list of the 10 most exciting exhibitions in Belgium in 2022. The entire programme of the young Pizza Gallery in Antwerp was singled out for praise by the three art journalists behind the article, but they paid particular attention to the solo presentation of Jonas Dehnen. At Art Rotterdam, the work of the German artist will be on display in the New Art Section.
Painting and drawing are central to Jonas Dehnen’s practice, but he also creates installations and sculptures, depending on specific exhibition contexts. Dehnen takes much of his visual raw material from the communities amongst which he grew up. He spent his formative years in both Germany and the United Kingdom, and has now been living in Belgium for several years. The artist is fascinated by the way in which communities construct a visual identity using symbols and traditions, from pub signs to carnival floats, from vernacular architecture to folk paintings, and other elements of what could be called ‘visual patois’. Which role is reserved for the collective and which for the individual, within that mechanism? And how does globalisation fit into that? Dehnen abstracts, fragments and re-combines different signifiers in his paintings, creating new characters and idiosyncratic protagonists. The pictures emerge from a prolonged process of trial and error: Layering, erasure, additive and subtractive painterly gestures, and the repurposing of underlying image fragments.
At Art Rotterdam, Dehnen presents a series of paintings that derive their imagery from romanticism in a broad sense. E.T.A. Hoffmann’s ‘Der Sandmann’ serves as a source for motifs, such as a mechanised eye, hands and wheels. These enigmatic structures and circuitries hint at designs for a primitive automaton. They also offer veiled visual references to past works in the artist’s oeuvre, and to paintings that hung in his childhood home, thereby establishing feedback loops of painterly gestures and ideas. There is an entanglement between the physical material of the work, and the image that took shape within it. Thinking and doing collapse into one another to become a singular mode of being in the world. The works are maps of themselves, map and territory both, thought-maps looping back into themselves in an infinite regression. At times the paint is applied as though to a location on a flat surface, and at other times at a certain depth within an image. The flatness of the object and the artifice of a painted picture are continually toyed with.
In 2019, Dehnen obtained his master’s degree in painting at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts (KASK) in Ghent, under the tutelage of Vincent Geyskens. Previously he completed a bachelor’s degree in fine arts at the University of Lancaster, UK. After graduating, Dehnen was invited for a residency at FLACC in Genk and last year, he was nominated for the PrixFintro Prize, for which he shared second prize. His work has been exhibited at Z33 House for Contemporary Art in Hasselt, claptrap in Antwerp, and Social Harmony in Ghent, among others.
Flor Linckens
No man is an island: artist Klaas Rommelaere turns family and friends into art
Artist Klaas Rommelaere is currently causing a stir with his Dark Uncles series, consisting of a parade of life-sized embroidered dolls of family and friends. For Art Rotterdam, Rommelaere made no fewer than ten new works to be displayed at Madé van Krimpen’s booth. “I am a loner. The paradox is that my work almost always involves people. I’ve even made them in doll form.”
Rommelaere (Belgium, 1986) studied fashion at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Ghent. During his studies, he did internships with Henrik Vibskov and Raf Simons, but soon realised that the fashion world was not a place where he could act on his ideas. Inspired by films, comics, books and personal experiences, Rommelaere began translating his ideas into visual work using the tools and materials he knew best: the needle, thread, wool and yarn.
Do you already know which works you will be showing at Art Rotterdam?
At Art Rotterdam, I’ll be showing works under the name of Dark Uncles. This is a project that started a few years ago when I came up with the idea to create a procession with people who have influenced me over the years, from family to friends. They wear embroideries of memories and photos and are completely covered with embroidery. The project has already been shown in Belgium, France, Germany and the Netherlands, with a different set-up each time. For Art Rotterdam, I made ten new works. I always find it interesting to work on an idea and see how far you can take it.
For those who don’t know your work: you create works of textile, embroidery or in the form of life-sized dolls. Why have you chosen this medium?
I became familiar with embroidery and handicrafts during my fashion studies. That study programme was my second Bachelor’s and Master’s and I was looking for an easy and direct way to convert my graphics into textiles without too much cost or hassle. So, as early as my first year, I began embroidering with wool and canvas from a local thrift store. In the years after that, I began exploring another technique. This is how my artistic process has evolved, which also fits my way of thinking. Handiwork takes a lot of time, and that time lets me think about my work and how it will end up. It’s like building a house: you lay brick by brick and in the end, you have an entire house or work of art. Completing a work or project can take anywhere from six months to two years.
You’ve titled the series Dark Uncles, a Swiss folklore term for doubles. It consists of life-sized dolls of family and friends. Why did you make the people in your immediate environment the subject of your work?
When I began working with canvas and flags, my grandmother always took care of the finishing touches. This was in Ingelmunster and a little ways down the road, there was a beautiful white wall where I always took pictures. The cloth always had to be carried like a flag to that location. My grandfather and a neighbour usually did this. I also took pictures of that little procession and always found it to be a strong image. As I’ve grown older, I sometimes enjoy looking back to see how far I’ve come and which people have influenced me. We’re so obsessed with moving forward these days that we sometimes forget our roots. No man is an island.
I’ve read that as many as 100 people have contributed to the Dark Uncles series. How does such a collaboration come about and where do you find so many people who are willing to embroider for you?
The first part of Dark Uncles was made entirely during the pandemic. At first, the idea was to do everything in workshops, but then the pandemic started. That’s why the museum made a call for volunteers who wanted to embroider. Many people were at home with a lot of time, so the response was massive. We sent everything by mail. I was in contact with them by WhatsApp and email. I did not see most of the people who helped out until the opening. From this project, a new group of ‘madammen’ has emerged, in addition to my first group in Merksem and Ingelmunster.
Embroidery takes a lot of skill and time. It is certainly not a fast technique. Do you consider your work a criticism of the fast-paced art world and our society in general?
It’s not a criticism because I didn’t consciously choose it. It’s just how I work. But I do think it feels different to people who see the work because it is something tangible, something practical and you can tell it has been created with care, time and skill. Visitors are always amazed because it looks different in real life than in pictures due to the details and texture of the canvas. Since it takes so long to finish a work, I can put in a lot of details, so that you cannot ‘read’ the work completely at a single glance. I often hear from people who have my work hanging in their homes that they see something new almost every day.
I read that you are inspired by cult films. Which films and why do these particular films appeal to you?
I try to see all films that are shown in cinemas and luckily, I have a subscription. Usually, it is the atmosphere of a film that appeals to me most. When I’m working on a project, I’m open to things that can ‘feed’ the project and make it stronger. When I was creating Dark Uncles, I travelled to Tokyo and became fascinated with Hayoa Miyazaki (co-founder and artistic director of the famous Japanese animation studio Ghibli, ed.). I’ve watched documentaries about him and read his biography and have learned that we think exactly the same way about life and the artistic process. I believe film is the ultimate art form.
Would you say that the main theme of your work is the relationship with your immediate environment?
I’m not much of a social person. I like to be alone and only need a few people who I see regularly. Apart from that, I’m a loner. The paradox is that there are almost always people in my work; I’ve even made them in puppet form. I think my work is a way to communicate with people, to feel connected to the ‘world’ as it were.
Wouter van den Eijkel
Salim Bayri – The MC of collision
What happens when opposing situations, technologies and cultures collide? Salim Bayri creates such collisions all the time, and often with a smile. With the digital environment as his point of departure, his work takes on various forms. You might call him the MC of the cultural-technological clash. Bayri has been nominated for this year’s NN Art Award.
In search of the core
Salim Bayri (Casablanca, Morocco, 1992) won the Volkskrant Visual Arts Prize last autumn. He was nominated by writer and jury member Abdelkader Benali, who praised him for his versatile and elusive body of work. Benali hits the nail on the head, as the core of Bayri’s work is difficult to define. “You sort of walk around it,” Bayri said in a recent interview with the magazine Mister Motley. “It would also be a failure to seize it as it were, because I would then be destroying the work and I don’t want to do that.”
Finding a core is also difficult because Bayri can rightly be called a multidisciplinary artist. He creates videos, installations, wearables, apps, drawings, digital prints and more. Bayri usually starts with a digital drawing, but is not very interested in the differences between online and offline expression. His interests are broader. “In essence, he allows opposing images, situations, technologies, cultural practices and phenomena to collide and then looks at the result with a smile. That creates a striking openness in all kinds of respects,” says Bayri’s gallery owner Kees van Gelder.
Van Gelder first came across Bayri’s work in 2017 when he visited Kimball Gunnar Holth’s graduation show in Groningen’s A-kerk. He was immediately sold. “Salim stood in front of his installation/scaffolding, which he called ‘Smartshop’, and sang towards the sculpture through an amplifier in Arabic, Dutch, French and Spanish, improvising descriptions of what he literally envisioned. The singing tone was clearly the North African multi-tone of the Maghreb. A fabulous presentation.”
Van Gelder is not the only one who has noticed Bayri’s work, given that his work is guaranteed to attract a lot of attention. Since completing his residency at the Rijksakademie, it has already been shown in the Netherlands at CODA, Framer Framed, W139, La Capella in Barcelona and Fondazione Merz in Turin. In addition to the Volkskrant Visual Art Prize, Bayri also won the Charlotte Köhler Prize awarded by the Prince Bernhard Culture Fund last year. At the end of January, Dead Skin Cash, a duo exhibition with Ghita Skali, will be opening in W139 in Amsterdam, where visitors can sell dead skin cells for money.
Code switching
Considering his background, the fact that toying with context, conventions and expectations is Bayri’s second nature is hardly surprising. Bayri grew up in Casablanca, where he attended a Spanish school. “I constantly heard Arabic and French all around me, while everything online was in English. As a young boy, I learned about Carlos II at school, after which I walked home along streets where everyone spoke Darija, and once at home, heard about the price of baguettes in French news. In my head, I switch constantly, searching for the common denominator.”
He went on to earn a Bachelor’s degree from the Escola Massana in Barcelona, a Master’s degree in Media, Art Design and Technology from the Frank Mohr Institute in Groningen and did a residency at the Rijksakademie, where he ultimately made a presentation similar to the one in the A-kerk in 2020.
Sad Ali
The most famous example of an object Bayri places in a different context is his alter ego Sad Ali, short for Sad Alien. It is no coincidence that the word Alien is a homonym that can refer to an alien life form as well as someone from another country. Sad Ali is a wordless, sad cartoon character who regularly appears in Bayri’s work and originated as a digital drawing, a computer file.
In terms of design, Sad Ali is like something straight out of a Pixar movie. Like cartoon characters, Sad Ali is a hollow shape. He has no heart, bones or brains. “So, these shapes are like containers. Everything that moves on the screen is hollow. Sad Ali is also empty; it doesn’t talk or say anything and has no agenda of its own. But there it is, and its presence is so fragile that it becomes the elephant in the room,” says Bayri. The latter is evident from the diverse reactions that Sad Ali elicits from visitors. While one visitor laughs about it, the other finds him terrifying.
ChatGPT’s analogue counterpart
For many people, the self-learning chatbot ChatGPT is a fantastic tool. You can ask the chatbot almost any kind of question and receive an answer in a complete sentence. But for an artist who toys with conventions and works from a digital environment, it is nothing short of a godsend.
In addition to a presentation of his Smartshop, Bayri has also considered presenting an analogue counterpart to the chatbot at Art Rotterdam. He originally intended for gallerist Van Gelder to sit in a chair in front of a white wall and hand out sheets of paper, each with a different question. “Unfortunately, there was not enough room for this on the exhibition floor, but Bayri is looking into possibilities to do something similar,” says Van Gelder.
Wouter van den Eijkel
At Art Rotterdam, you will spot the work of hundreds of artists from all over the world. In this series we highlight a number of artists who will show remarkable work during the fair. During Art Rotterdam, Upstream Gallery will present work by Noor Nuyten, Kévin Bray (who was nominated for the NN Art Award), Frank Ammerlaan and Marinus Boezem. In their practice, these artists all explore a connection between material, physical worlds and immaterial or digital worlds. Experimentation in terms of materials and techniques plays a significant role in that.
Marinus Boezem (1934) is considered to be one of the most influential Dutch conceptual artists of the past century, alongside Ger van Elk and Jan Dibbets. In the 1960s, Boezem discovered the artistic potential of elusive elements such as air, weather, movement and light, resulting in a series of exciting, intelligent and immaterial works that often contain a powerful, poetic and humorous charge.
His work “3 Seconds of Dutch Light” from 1976 offers a striking illustration. Most people will think of 17th century paintings when they hear the term ‘Dutch light’. Boezem offered a more conceptual twist to the genre, when he exposed a sheet of photosensitive photo paper to Dutch light for three seconds, after which he mounted it on an aluminum plate. Three full seconds of light, however, will result in a completely monochromatic black sheet of paper. The 17th-century painters who traveled en masse to our coast may have managed to capture a representation or interpretation of light, but Boezem’s work actually captures Dutch light — as a material or ingredient, even if it is no longer visible to the viewer.
The idea is central to Boezem’s practice, alongside a curious imagination. This means that he works in a multitude of materials and disciplines. In 2021, the Kröller-Müller Museum presented his ‘shows’, based on a series of fifteen drawings that he made between 1964 and 1969. These are conceptual blueprints for installations that could possibly be realised. Boezem sent them to art institutions or presented them in person. Some concepts were implemented at the time, other sketches first found a physical form in the exhibition at the Kröller-Müller Museum.
Boezem wants to make art that is close to life, in part because museums do not always invest in their relationship with (and relevance within) society. In 1969 he was co-initiator of the rebellious and leading exhibition ‘On loose screws’ in the Stedelijk Museum. One of the works he exhibited was “Bedding”, for which he hung pillows and sheets from all the windows of the museum. With a wink he symbolised both a breath of fresh air through the museum and a recognisable household tradition. At the same time, Boezem manages to make something immaterial visible: a breeze. Moreover, the artist effectively blurs the boundaries between the almost sacred museum space and the public space, presenting art as a bridge between the museum and society.
Boezem would later make several works of art for the public space. His “Green Cathedral” in Almere was voted the most popular outdoor artwork in the Netherlands — wedding ceremonies are even performed there. The work consists of 174 Italian poplars that form the floor plan of the Notre-Dame cathedral of Reims, true to size. A little further on, the exact same shape has been removed from a wooded area, reshaping the floor plan of the structure, but now in negative space. The cathedral is a recurring element in Boezem’s oeuvre and the artist also joked that a new city, rising from the polder, deserved a cathedral. Other recurring themes in his practice include the universe and cartography.
Boezem’s conceptual work is also related to the arte povera of the 1960s and 1970s, an originally Italian art movement in which artists resisted the commercialisation of the art world, among other things. On the one hand, materials were chosen that represented no financial value — such as earth or twigs — and on the other hand, the often perishable or immaterial art of these makers was sometimes difficult to trade as a commercial product. The movement was extremely influential, with significant parallels in other international art forms of the time; from land art and minimal art to conceptual art.
Boezem’s work has been exhibited at Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, the MoMA, the Brooklyn Museum, the Van Abbemuseum, Kunsthalle Bern, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, the Hamburger Bahnhof and the Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art, among others. His work has been collected by institutions like the MoMA, Museum Voorlinden, Kunstmuseum Den Haag, the Stedelijk Museum, Museum Boijmans van Beuningen and the Kröller-Muller Museum. During Art Rotterdam, the work of Marinus Boezem will be on display in the booth of Upstream Gallery.
Flor Linckens
