For its exhibition Twiemæl Sterben (“Dying Twice” in an invented Germano-Scheveningen dialect) Galerie Maurits van de Laar has changed into a kind of war zone.
But don’t worry too much, as the battle is especially about the expansive way the human spirit can turn time and space upside down by sheer imagination.
So you may be shot at by colours and shapes that may or may not have any historic reference.
The duo show has come about by a tight co-operation of Cedric ter Bals (1990) and Philip Akkerman (1957).
Ter Bals presents his recent picture novel Tagebuch Oskar von Balz (Diary Oskar von Balz) about which i have already written extensively in Villa La Repubblica. Click here to read that article (in Dutch).
Akkerman, of course, won’t need much introduction as the uncurable self portrait painter.
No doubt Akkerman’s works are self portraits but on the other hand they are not, as they are also reflections on painting and its traditions, from medieval to post-modern, or rather a mix of it.
Looking at them, one may think of different styles but they are always clearly in the first place works by Akkerman, who defies the usual linear idea of history.
That is where he meets his much younger colleague Ter Bals, to whom he has given much space to arrange the show.
Some of Akkerman’s works even drown more or less behind the scene here and there.
Click here to read the article about Ter Bals in Villa La Repubblica (in Dutch).
© Villa Next Door 2019
Contents of all photographs courtesy to the artists and Galerie Maurits van de Laar, Den Haag
Bertus Pieters
VILLA NEXT DOOR IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY ADVERTISING ON THIS PAGE!
