Günter Tuzina: 14 November – 19 December 2009
Slewe Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of the exhibition of Günter Tuzina with new works at Slewe Gallery from November 14 through December 19, 2009.
The very refined drawings and paintings by Günter Tuzina show the inheritance of the minimalist idiom of the sixties and seventies. His rectangled drawings in mostly dark blue, red and green colors look like windows. They are cut by expressive horizontal, vertical and diagonal lines. These lines and angles are not quite perfect, which give them an emotional significance. It contrasts sharply with the anonymous, industrial perfection of Minimal Art.
Günter Tuzina, born in 1951 in Hamburg (DE), lives and works in Munich. In 2002 he had an overview of his oeuvre in the Gemeentemuseum The Hague, on which occasion also a catalog had been published. His works have been internationally shown and collected by several museum and public collections such as the Gemeentemuseum The Hague and the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. Since 1999 he showed regularly at Slewe Gallery. This exhibition is his third one at Slewe Gallery in Amsterdam.
Martina Klein: 3 October – 7 November 2009
Slewe Gallery is pleased to announce the exhibition with new works by German artist Martina Klein (*1962). The exhibition will open Saturday October 3 and will run until November 11, 2009.
Klein makes large monochrome canvases, which are most of the time not hanging on the wall in an usual way, but stand against the wall or stand free in space, like an object. According to Klein the composition is not made in the painting it self but occurs in the space, within the relation of other paintings. The various monochromes make a choreography of color planes which defines the space and gives it character.
Klein builts up her painting with several layers of self made recepies of paint. Adding more pigments to the oil, give the painting a radiant effect. Her specific use of colors and the way of painting gives her work an extra quality. Recently she cuts the canvases loose of the stretchers, so that they hang partly free form their support. This exhibition will show some smaller examples of these new series
Klein lives and works in Duesseldorf. Her first solo exhibition had been at Konrad Fischer Galerie in Duesseldorf. She also exhibits regularly at Galerie Tschudi in Glarus (CH), Arnaud Lefebvre in Paris (FR) and at Slewe Gallery. In 2004 she had a solo exhibition at the Rijksmuseum Twenthe, Enschede. In 2009 she had an exhibition at Kunstraum Alexander Buerkle. In Freiburg. 2012 she has been invited by the LehmbruckMuseum in Duisburg to make an installation . Also she has been particpating at a group show in the Arp Museum in Rolandseck (DE). Her work has been collected ineternationally by both private and public institutions.
A Tactile Vision: 29 August – 26 September 2009
A Tactile Vision. A choice by Alan Johnston, 29.08 – 26.09.2009
Slewe Galerie opent het nieuwe seizoen met de expositie Japan. A Tactile Vision. Hij is samengesteld door de uit Schotland afkomstige kunstenaar Alan Johnston (*1945). In deze tentoonstelling poogt Johnston door te dringen tot de kern van het Japans esthetisch denken. Hij doet persoonlijk verslag van zijn fascinatie door werk van Japanse en door Japan geïnspireerde Westerse kunstenaars samen te brengen, die hij tijdens zijn loopbaan ontmoette. Hij gaat het spoor terug.
Op een regenachtige middag in januari eind jaren zeventig nam collega-kunstenaar Richard Tuttle Johnston mee naar een tentoonstelling van John McLaughlin in de galerie van Andre Emmerich in New York. McLaughlin wordt in de moderne kunst beschouwd als een sleutelfiguur, wat Japan betreft. De in Los Angeles woonachtige schilder en Japankenner McLaughlin (1898-1976) sloeg met zijn minimale ‘hard-edge’ schilderijen een brug tussen het reductionistische modernisme van Malevich en Mondriaan en de traditionele Japanse kunst. Voor McLaughlin betekende de vijftiende-eeuwse monnik/schilder Sesshu de belichaming van de essentie van de Japanse beeldende esthetica. Sesshu is bekend van zijn bijna abstracte inkttekeningen, waarbij met spaarzame middelen oneindige ruimte wordt gesuggereerd. Daarnaast legde hij zich toe op afgewogen tuinontwerpen.
Tijdens zijn vele reizen heeft Johnston een uitgebreid internationaal netwerk opgebouwd van kunstenaars, architecten, galeries en verzamelaars. Dit resulteerde in uitwisselingen en samenwerkingen over en weer. Zo leerde hij via de kunstenaar/galeriehouder Hideo Shimada uit Yamaguchi de uit Düsseldorf afkomstige fotograaf Thomas Struth kennen. Als gevolg daarvan portretteerde Struth in Edinburgh de stad, Johnstons familie en vrienden. Met de architect Shinichi Ogawa werkte Johnston in een voor beide inspirerende samenwerking meerdere ideeën uit op het grensvlak van beeldende kunst en architectuur. Voor de tentoonstelling worden van deze kunstenaars en anderen werken samengebracht. Soms vers uit het atelier, in andere gevallen in bruikleen uit privé-verzamelingen.
Waar het John McLaughlin om te doen was - en in zijn spoor ook Alan Johnston - is het zichtbaar maken van het onuitsprekelijke, de uitsparing. Hierbij diende de grote lege ruimtes in de tekeningen van Sesshu als oriëntatie. Dit moeilijk omschrijfbaar begrip wordt ‘ma’ genoemd. Naast een andere notie ‘wabi’, vertaald met subtiel (in relatie tot balans), geldt dit niet alleen als kernwoord voor de Japanse traditie maar ook voor de moderne minimale abstracte Westerse kunst.
Deelnemende kunstenaars: Richard Tuttle, Hideo Shimada, Thomas Struth, Shinichi Ogawa, John McLaughlin, Adam Barker-Mill, Masayuki Yasuhara, Takashi Suzuki, Atsuo Hukuda, Roger Ackling, Tom Clark, Andreas Karl Schulze, Tom Benson, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Kenzo Onoda, Takaya Fujii, Eiji Watanabe, Yasuko Otsuka, On Kawara, Ragna Róbertsdóttir, Takahiro Iwasaki, Kiyoshi Yamato, David Connearn.
Domenico Bianchi: 23 May – 20 June 2009
Slewe Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of the exhibition with new works by the Italian artist Domenico Bianchi (*1955). The exhibition will open Saturday May 23 and will run until June 20, 2009.
Bianchi is known for his paintings made with his own developed technique of mixing wax and oil paint, sometimes combined with Palladium leaf. His images with a perpetuum mobile motive derive from computer program stills. The exhibition will show also some new works on paper in addition to some paintings.
Bianchi, born in 1955, lives and works in Rome. He studied at Fine Art Academy in Rome. He career started in 1977 with his first solo show at Ugo Ferranti in New York. In the eighties he became known as one of the emerging artistst of the so-called La Nuova Scuola Romana and exhibited his work alongside Arte Povera artistst such as Kounellis and Mario Merz. He had his first show in the Netherlands at Riekje Swart in 1980. Several European museum made solo shows of his work, such as at the Stedelijk Museum in 1994, and at MACRO in Rome in 2003. He participated in several Venice Bienials,in 1993 as a solo artist. Since 1998 he shows regularly at Christian Stein in Milan. Slewe Gallery shows his work since 2009.
Joris Geurts: 4 April – 9 May 2009
Slewe Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of the exhibition with new paintings by Dutch artist Joris Geurts (*1958). The opening will be Saturday April 4 and the exhibition will run until May 9, 2005.
Geurts, born in 1958 in Oss, makes abstract paintings, drawings and prints. They are assiociatively built up, but transparantly layered and traceble. Small squares and dots float on deep blues and greens, giving associations with the kosmos or landscape.
After his study at the AKI in Enschede, Geurts started his career in the eighties at Art & Project Gallery in Amsterdam. Since 1995 he showed regularly at Slewe Gallery. In 2001 he had a show at Noordbrabants Museum in ’s-Hertogenbosch, on which occasion a catalog had been published Purple Blue and Lemon Yellow, giving an overview of his work, wth texts by Bert Jansen and Henk van Woerden. In addition to his painting practice he also works as a composer of music. His works have been collected by several important public collections, such as the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam, Rijksmuseum Twenthe, Enschede and the corporate art collections of the AKZO Nobel, ABN AMRO, KPN, Bouwfonds and AEGON.
Merina Beekman, Opium Garden: 21 February – 28 March 2009
Slewe Gallery is pleased to announce the exhibition Opium Garden with new works by Merina Beekman (*1961, NL). The opening will be Saturday February 21 and the exhibition will run until March 28, 2009. Approximately at the same time another exhibition with an overview of her work, entitled Apparently not Enough, Again, will be held at Museum De Pont in Tilburg, which will open March 21 and runs until May 24, 2009. For this occasion Slewe Gallery has published a catalog with an overview of her work, entitled Connaissez vous la pluie...? It will be available at the gallery and at Museum De Pont.
Merina Beekman is known for her large black and white drawings with Indian Ink on paper. Sometimes she draws on velvet, which gives her work a more sculptural character. Her art is a result of her travelling experiences through Middle Eastern cultures. Islamic motifs and patterns appear frequently in her drawings, trying as she said to mislead the Evil Eye. Though fascinated by these colourful Eastern cultures she never used color, in order to create distance towards her subject and make the works more abstract. In the last years she also uses embroidery in her drawings.
Beekman, born in 1961 (NL), lives and workes in Amsterdam. She had been educated at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam from 1980 to 1986. Her first single artist exhibition was at Van Krimpen Gallery in Amsterdam in 1989. Since 1995 she exhibited regularly at Slewe Gallery. In 2005 she had a single artist exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum De Lakenhal in Leiden entitled Dazzle the Local Demons. From 2005 to 2008 she participated in the travelling exhibition through Europe Into Drawing, on which occasion a similar entitled catalogue had been published.
Her work has been collected by both private and public institutions, such as the Groninger Museum, Museum Jan Cunen in oss, ABN AMRO Bank Art Collection, NOG Collection of the SNS Reaal Fonds, Caldic Collection and AKZO Nobel Art Foundation. Also she had done several commissions for the NS, the Dutch Rail Way company, and the Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst.
Steven Aalders, Celestial Chart: 10 January – 14 February 2009
Slewe Gallery is pleased to announce Steven Aalders: Celestial Chart, the next exhibition at the gallery. It comprises some new series of paintings and will take place from January 10 through February 14, 2009
Steven Aalders, known for his carefully hand painted geometric abstract oil paintings proceeds on his earlier theme of orientation for his new exhibition. Whereas the direction of his former series was pointing more horizontal the new works are, as appears from the title of the exhibition, predominantly vertical focused. Constellations of a broken grid of horizontal and vertical coloured bars feature against a light or dark coloured background They move between a pattern and a sign, evoking a spatial working atmosphere. Like in his earlier work his use of colour reflects various colour concepts from the past.
Aalders evokes the history of modern abstraction, both seriously and playfully reverting to the origins of Constructivism and Minimal Art of the sixties and seventies. His work is an attempt to embody the essence, to create light and space through paint, and to remap the tradition of history of art as well. Modernist serial principles such as repetition and sameness are both connected to older traditions in Western art and Eastern abstract art. The carefully made multi layered oil paintings demand a concentrated eye of the beholder.
Steven Aalders, born in 1959 in Middelbug (NL), lives and works in Amsterdam. He studied in London at Croydon College of Art and at Ateliers 63 in Haarlem (NL). In 2002 he had a solo exhibition Vertical Thoughts at the S.M.A.K. in Ghent in Belgium. A catalogue with texts by Jan Hoet and Pietje Tegenbosch was published at the same time. His work has been collected by several museum collections such as the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.