Three exhibitions to see in the vicinity of Rotterdam
If you’re making a weekend trip out of your visit to Art Rotterdam, you might want to pass by some other places on your way to Rotterdam. We’ve selected three exhibitions for you to see, all within one hour of the fair.
Philippe Van Snick at De Hallen, Haarlem
De Hallen Haarlem kicks off the new year with a solo exhibition by Belgian artist Philippe Van Snick (°1946, BE). The exhibition spans almost five decades, and traces developments in this artist’s highly consistent body of work, best known for its postminimalist painting. Van Snick’s systematic approach to abstraction both offers fresh perspectives on recent developments in painting, and on a more fundamental level connects to the algorithmic interests of the post-digital generation.
In the late ’70s his interest in systematic artistic methodologies lead Van Snick to formulate and consistently apply a colour and numeral system, which allows him to develop a closely knit body of work in the following decades. In his painting and sculpture, the dominant concerns of modernism are invoked (the autonomy of the artwork, geometric abstraction as a universal language), while at the same time everyday observations and an intuitive approach to materiality play a major role.
The exhibition departs from a key work from 1968, Synthesis of Traditional L-shaped Room, and ends with a new work, Mexican Dream Cabin. These two works, with nearly 50 years in between them, are monumental architectural structures in which Van Snick expresses his interest in systematic methodologies and a minimalist visual language. Between these monumental bookends, the relationship between painting, space, and viewer is explored in an extensive selection of closely interrelated works.
Philippe Van Snick’s solo exhibition is co-organized with Grazer Kunstverein (Austria), where a complementary show with his work is presented from March 12–May 22, 2016.
De Hallen
Grote Markt 16
Haarlem
Tuesday-Saturday 11:00 – 17:00
Sundays and bank holidays 12:00 – 17:00
Photography: Gert Jan van Rooij, images courtesy of the artist and De Hallen, Haarlem
Isa Genzken Mach Dich hübsch! at Stedelijk, Amsterdam
“Mach Dich hübsch!” presents a survey of the extraordinary oeuvre of Isa Genzken (°1948, DE), one of the most influential artists of the last 40 years. The exhibition, Genzken’s first major retrospective in the Netherlands, is her largest survey to date, comprising over 200 works.
Mach Dich hübsch! is an odyssey through four decades of an astonishing practice defined by artistic freedom and bold inventiveness. The first room introduces the concept of the exhibition. It was designed, in collaboration with Genzken, as a comprehensive installation of older works mixed with very recent work, which she created for this exhibition. In the following suite of galleries, Genzken’s oeuvre is presented as a montage, not a chronology, to highlight interconnections and thematic threads. The artist engages with themes such as artistic position, the body, identity, the (self) portrait, architecture, and big-city culture.
Genzken’s oeuvre is rooted in the medium of sculpture, and is distinguished by radical experimentation and the unconstrained use of media. The artist works across a wide range of media, which includes sculpture, installation, film, video, painting, work on paper, collage, and photography. The radical inventiveness of her work, rich in autobiographical elements and subtle social critique, serves as a reference point and inspiration source for generations of artists and art lovers.
Stedelijk Museum
Museumplein 10
Amsterdam
Monday-Saturday 10:00 – 18:00
Friday 10:00 – 22:00
Photography: Gert Jan van Rooij, images courtesy of the artist and Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam
Display Show at Stroom, the Hague
Display is an elementary social gesture: something is shown to someone and to the world. Display Show proposes we consider display as intrinsic to artistic production and interpretation, as the process of taking shape that redefines notions of work, artwork and exhibition.
Display Show follows a path that leads from doing-something-to-show-things, to the idea that those actions not only change the way we see things, but also transform the nature of what is displayed, of who is looking, and of their environment.
Display Show at Stroom Den Haag is an enquiry into forms of display, and presents existing and new works by international artists including Céline Condorelli, Charlotte Cullinan & Jeanine Richards, Koenraad Dedobbeleer, Flore Nové-Josserand, Goshka Macuga, Rita McBride, Eilis McDonald, Nathalie du Pasquier, Amalia Pica, Yelena Popova, Haim Steinbach, Gavin Wade, Nicole Wermers and Christopher Williams.
The exhibition is also articulated in relationship to, and ‘after’ radical display practices from the twentieth-century, such as Franco Albini, Eileen Gray, El Lissitzky and Carlo Scarpa; these approaches will be presented through methods of reconstruction, re-enactment, modelling, mirroring, copying and upcycling.
After presentations in Temple Bar Gallery (Dublin) and Eastside Projects (Birmingham) the third edition of Display Show takes place in The Hague. Display Show is curated by Céline Condorelli, Gavin Wade and James Langdon.
Stroom
Hogewal 1-9
The Hague
Wednesday – Sunday 12:00 – 17:00
Photography: Studio Johan Nieuwenhuize, images courtesy of the artists and Stroom, The Hague