Swedish artist Oskar Nilsson used to make works drenched in death and the macabre.
Oskar Nilsson
It is as if somebody or something told him to cut it all, as now his works look like sweet dreams.
Oskar Nilsson
It is a matter of from being over the top on the dark side to being over the top on the sunny side.
Oskar Nilsson
What remains is a fairytale-like atmosphere where little white ghosts – apparently in love – sit on cut off tree trunks amid fragrant flowers bending in the wind.
Oskar Nilsson
It is all so sweet that it is almost too eerie in its own right.
left: Paul van der Zande; centre: Elsa Hartjesveld; right: Hans Ensink op Kemna
left: Elsa Hartjesveld; right: Paul van der Zande
The installation is based on the circle (Hartjesveld), the triangle (Ensink op Kemna) and the square (Van der Zande).
left: Paul van der Zande; right: Elsa Hartjesveld
Paul van der Zande
As such the three painters show that one doesn’t always need objects to redefine space in a monumental way.
Hans Ensink op Kemna
Hans Ensink op Kemna
The interaction between the three volumes is quite significant.
Hans Ensink op Kemna
Elsa Hartjesveld
Elsa Hartjesveld
Being invited i was quite happy to see it all, as art spaces like Ruimtevaart are still closed due to the corona lockdown.
Elsa Hartjesveld
Elsa Hartjesveld
Like many shows this one has been prolonged and it is hoped for that it will be open to the public before short.
Paul van der Zande
Paul van der Zande
However, the present governmental restrictions are as unpredictable as the virus itself, so we have to keep our fingers crossed.
Elsa Hartjesveld
Paul van der Zande
Ensink op Kemna has recently had a solo exhibition in Delft, but seeing works by the other two artists is a bit of a rare event.
Paul van der Zande
Hans Ensink op Kemna
Especially Van der Zande’s works are rarely seen and this exhibition proves how unjust that is.
Hans Ensink op Kemna
Elsa Hartjesveld
For Hartjesveld – who shows a series of small works – this was a good opportunity to try her hand on abstract work on a more monumental scale.
Elsa Hartjesveld
Elsa Hartjesveld
There is also a wonderful dialogue between the three very individual styles.
Elsa Hartjesveld
Hans Ensink op Kemna
Hartjesveld, with her more or less intuitive kind of works, seems to open up the secret and unexpected space in between the straight lines of the works by Ensink op Kemna and Van der Zande.
Paul van der Zande
Hans Ensink op Kemna
For artistic dialogue Ruimtevaart seems to have become a very special space, while it has also opened up its ‘spare room’ as a kind of introduction space.
Paul van der Zande
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Trying to find Katerina Sidorova’s (1991) inspiration for her work The Wall – which is currently presented as part of the duo exhibition with works by her and by Wieske Wester (1985) at Dürst Britt & Mayhew – i worked through all kinds of weapon porn (one could call it “un-gay porn”) on YouTube, but found it at last in a weaponry review site.
(Being an art historian brings you to the most improbable cavities of the human mind).
Katerina Sidorova
I was amazed, not just with the ingenuity of the anti-riot wall (which is Sidorova’s source of inspiration), but especially with the artistry of the demonstration video.
Katerina Sidorova
The Thunderbirds of a far-away-childhood wouldn’t stand a chance against such and all the other modern devises.
Wieske Wester
Wieske Wester (“Mea Culpa”)
These would crush any childhood dream and indeed any adult dream.
Katerina Sidorova
Sidorova’s reflections are even more dreamlike, but one could doubt if it is a happy dream.
Katerina Sidorova
It is clear the violence has stopped in one way or another, and her works stand and hang in silence.
Katerina Sidorova
Katerina Sidorova
They are tender, transparent, maybe smudged, even broken fragments of hope and pain.
Katerina Sidorova (“The Wall”)
As an ensemble they are very impressive in between Wester’s robust paintings. George Orwell’s famous novel Animal Farm (Wester’s source of inspiration) was published only two years before Kalashnikov – the namesake of the modern Russian weapon company responsible for the anti-riot wall – designed the AK 47 in the aftermath of World War II.
Katerina Sidorova (“The Wall”)
As you probably know, in George Orwell’s Animal Farm the farm animals rebel and seize power in order to create a fairer society.
Wieske Wester (“Mea Culpa”)
Wieske Wester
However, the pigs manage to be on top and run a dictatorship.
Wieske Wester
In Wester’s paintings the pigs become less aggressive.
Wieske Wester (“Arthur”)
And why not, as pigs can be, after all, quite disarming animals.
Wieske Wester (“Arthur”)
Wieske Wester (“Eric”)
With their pinkish complexion they even look a bit like white Europeans, they are as gluttonous, playful and pathetic as human kind.
Katerina Sidorova (“The Wall”)
With the painting Arthur however, there is a stark reminder of death, maybe inspired by the skull of Willingdon Beauty, the patriarch of the animals’ revolution.
left and right: Wieske Wester; centre: Katerina Sidorova
As a portrait bleaching in memory, George Orwell (in the painting Mea Culpa) looks at Sidorova’s Wall, while split characters of his real name (Eric Arthur Blair) look at each other, one alive and the other as dead as a dodo.
David Roth
The front gallery shows completely different work by David Roth (1985).
David Roth
Last year, during the first Covid-19 period, i wrote quite extensively about one of his works in Villa La Repubblica (click here to read it – in Dutch).
David Roth
In Sidorova’s and Wester’s works the materials play an important expressive role.
David Roth
One could say that is even more so in Roth’s paintings.
David Roth
His works are about many aspects of the act of painting itself, both technical and spiritual ones.
David Roth
Roth draws his inspiration from the work and the material itself.
David Roth
One could even say the paint and the painter inspire each other, as the title of the show implies – and with a firm wink – it is both a physical and mental love affair.
David Roth
My visit to both exhibitions was rather last-minute: this weekend will be your last chance to see it all in real.
David Roth
If you can, do so!
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It was a grey day when i visited Yaïr Callender (1987) in his studio, in a seemingly forgotten suburb of The Hague near Broeksloot Canal.
Exactly the time and place not to be distracted by road signs, colourful advertising, cars and other visual noise, and to value the shapes and characters of things and objects, and to see how man and nature work on them.
Once it must have been part of human instinct to closely examine and read the environment, to literally see what it had to tell us and to inspire our imagination.
Somewhere in the history of seeing there must have been some sort of point where nature became culture in the perception of man.
When i arrived, Callender was working on a hexagon, sanding and judging its surface.
We discussed the point where a spot either remains just a spot or becomes something significant in its structure and colour. He also told me he likes the hexagon as a shape.
It has more possibilities than for instance the rather stable square or than the circle with its connotations with eternity etc.
Apart from natural processes Callender has a keen interest in the basic shapes of culture and how they personify human thinking. Clearly, making is a kind of thinking to Callender.
That is also a great difference with carpentry – the trade he is trying to earn a daily income with.
He likes the work itself but it is quite different from art in that it is – for all its aesthetics – purely practical.
Walking around in Callender’s studio one could easily get the idea that being an artist is a kind of romantic business where everything will shape itself if the artist is in the right mood.
Nothing could be further from the truth however, as Callender has to critically think and rethink his ideas while working and watching and also thinking about the practicalities of things.
Will the objects he is making have the right impact on the viewer, and how will they behave in the exhibition space?
And then there are the common everyday practicalities: how to organise your daily business such that you can give your art the dominant and professional place in life it needs. Well, the common story for any artist i guess.
Callender is best known for his monumental work, but his care for detail also brings him to works in which these details attract attention of the viewer and will make the viewer look further for details.
These details may be sculpted, drawn, painted or anything else, as long as they make the viewer wonder and associate.
Any intervention, any detail in a work adds to the meaning of the whole work, whether it is the surface of it, the colour or structure or any sign.
We talked things over with a cup of coffee until we both had to go our ways, back to the rumour of daily life again.
Next month Callender’s work can be seen at Omstand in Arnhem and later somewhere this year in Delft.
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Built around 1980 the architecture shows a country – despite the then looming economic crisis – which is thought to be finished, with prosperity and welfare for everybody.
The houses look simple, practical, friendly and inexpensive. They don’t breathe much modernist ambition, as they didn’t need it anymore.
They were built as part of the rigorous expansion of The Hague toward the south.
As discussed in the last two postings about the present show at Nest (click here and here) co-operation between artists is a tendency of the last few years.
Both are gifted draughtsmen, and having made drawings together for some years, now it is time to show the results to the public.
The procedure is quite simple: one starts a sketch and the other will work it out.
Through the years their drawings have developed as if they were made by one – albeit very versatile – artist.
Muijrers usually makes quite detailed drawings in which she sometimes seems to drown in a parallel world of remembrances, dreams and feelings.
Van der Eerden creates more robust shapes in which a life in modernist and postmodernist times can often be traced in a sometimes cartoonlike design.
The partnership is not based on competition or to make improvements and corrections in each other’s ideas.
The idea is to inspire each other and to make drawings that have a character of their own in spite of being created by two individuals.
They very much succeeded in doing so.
Both artists’ ideas and preoccupations breathe through the enormous amount of works shown in the gallery, but in the end it is like two pianists playing four-hands.
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Although the works are clearly made by three individual artists, they are presented as parts of a bigger philosophy.
There are no name tags in the exhibition and no titles, even in the accompanying booklet there are no references to individual works.
The visitor is welcomed in a vestibule via a stylish, formal entrance.
In the vestibule you can get acquainted with the styles of the three artists.
From the vestibule there are doorways with clear sightlines to some of the other rooms.
The architecture works very well. Made with a modest but elegant wooden framework the “villa” looks very open, with communicating rooms.
The dialogue of the works differs per room, just as rooms have different functions in a house.
As a whole the “villa” works as a body, or a spacious set of brains.
Although there are paintings, drawings, some ceramics and even a video, textiles have a prominent place.
There are different aspects like reflections on art history, the accumulation of ideas and drawings, the corporeality of language, the sensitivity of shapes etc.
Altogether it is a wonderful presentation of three very able artists in an environment that clearly invites the mind to wandering and gives a sense of safety to do so.
It’s all the more a shame that institutions like Nest are still not allowed to open, while commercial galleries are open to the public, albeit under strict conditions.
Platforms like Nest are just as able to take care of the safety restrictions as commercial galleries.
In the mean time i was happy to be invited by Nest to have a look and i hope that, as soon as the lockdown restrictions are lifted, you will be able to see this show, which has been constructed with so much care and enthusiasm and which – i must say – is very inspiring and sympathetic.
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Co-operating artists have become a real feature in present day art.
One might think this is a result of the corona pandemic, but in fact the tendency is going on already for quite some time.
The ways of co-operation are quite different, as are the motives.
However, there may be overall motives for co-operation.
First of all there is the basic reason that there is strength in unity.
Strength is needed in times when the art market has become a circus corrupting the real value of art, when artists, as a result, are taken even less seriously than before, and when their works are seen as commercial, disposable products.
As such there seems to be a sense of safety in numbers, even if the numbers are just 2 or 3.
There may be stylistic reasons too.
In the Post-postmodern era stylistic differences have become less of an issue than before in modern art history, and artists seem to be more willing to see each other’s qualities and learn from them, in spite of differences in background or even age.
In an era of crises (world crises in health, ecology, climate and human intelligence) some artists just don’t see the point in being an autonomous genius, and obviously there is an audience who finds this interesting in one way or another, otherwise there wouldn’t be so many communal artistic initiatives on offer
Architect Donna van Milligen Bielke has designed a home, even a villa, for three artists to show their work at Nest.
The three artists, Mila Lanfermeijer, Ana Navas and Evelyn Taocheng Wang are close friends and let their works communicate with each other and with the public, in the belief that their works and ideas will strengthen each other.
The idea is not that their individual works are not convincing, but rather that combining their works will advance their own creativity and thinking, and indeed that of the viewer.
Seinpost residencies, Zeekant/Seinpostduin, block of apartments designed by Cees Dam (1932), built in the second half of the 1970s.
In Western European architectural history it became common for façades of churches to be built on the west side.
Especially in prestigious Romanesque and Pre-Romanesque churches these façades became particularly awe inspiring.
The idea was that the church and faith had to be protected from evil, which could come from the west, the place where the sun sets.
Along the Dutch coastline buildings are usually turned with their façades toward the sea, which is to the west.
These buildings give their inhabitants the privilege of a private sunset every evening.
At Scheveningen (the harbour and a seaside resort of The Hague) on one of the highest points along the coastline this block of flats was built with glass towers to give each apartment a maximum of sunlight and sea views.
The tiles are white to reflect the sunlight.
However, despite all good intentions, on a wintery day the structure looks quite desolate, something like a rock in a zoo where the baboons have died out.
The corner towers – be they from glass or not -, the small prison-like windows, and the monumental white volume sends a message of awe towards the sea: everything coming from overseas should keep its distance, if it doesn’t want to be imprisoned, sentenced to watch the sun go down eternally.
Villa Next Door 2 