Krijn de Koning, Ruud Kuijer: 26 November – 24 December 2020

During Amsterdam Art Gallery Weekend (26-29 November) Slewe Gallery is pleased to open the exhibition of small sculptures by two Dutch artists: Krijn de Koning (*1963) and Ruud Kuijer (*1959). Both artists are known for their large-scale abstract sculptures throughout the Netherlands and abroad. Krijn de Koning for his colourful site-specific architectural installations and Ruud Kuijer for his classic abstract sculptures made of steel and concrete. In this exhibition Kuijer will show a new series of middle-sized iron I-beam sculptures. De Koning will present some new small interactive objects that you can tumble on each side as well as a new multiple, Volumes and Voids, produced in collaboration with Collect Editions. 

Krijn de Koning deals with the question how we experience architectural space. Most of the time De Koning creates site-specific work that questions the specific characteristics of a given location. More than spatial interventions these works are homogenous structures that can best be defined as sculpture, but also incorporate the qualities of painting and architecture. In this exhibition some small sculptures, a kind of models, will be shown. De Koning gives us, the public, an interactive role in the possibility of tumbling and playing around with the elements of sculpture and composing your own sculpture.

De Koning studied at the Ateliers 63 in Haarlem and Institut des Hautes Etudes et Art Plastiques in Paris. In 2007 he received the prestigious Sikkens award. He participated in many international exhibitions, such as in the Folkestone Triennial in 2014 and the Art Triennial of Beaufort in Oostende in 2009. He realized huge installations at the Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam in 2010, at Musée des Beaux–Arts de Nantes in 2011 and in the submarine-base in Saint Nazaire in 2018. Currently he has a large installation at Compton Verney’s park, nearby Birmingham. His work has been collected by several important private collections, such as the collection of Jean-Philippe & Françoise Billarant and public collections, such as the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Museum Boijmans, Centraal Museum and AkzoNobel Art Collection in the Netherlands and the FNAC and FRACs in France.

Ruud Kuijer is known for his series of large concrete sculptures along the banks of the Amsterdam Rijnkanaal in Utrecht, the so-called Waterworks. For these casts he uses plastic waste material, such as ordinary plastic bottles and boxes that we use every day. The forms of these found objects are stacked and linked into his abstract assemblages. The artist considers concrete a sustainable material and a modern variant of bronze. In addition to concrete he also works in iron, as in these I-beam sculptures. The I-beam has a limited history in art and challenges him to many new possibilities. A single piece of I beam is always the starting point. Kuijer opens the I-beam, he breaks the symmetry of the block and creates a three-dimensional ‘new’ sculpture by cutting and assembling this hard material.

Kuijer lives and works in Utrecht. He studied at the Koninklijke Academie voor Kunst en Vormgeving in Den Bosch and the Jan van Eyck Academy in Maastricht. His works are collected internationally by private and corporate collectors, as well as museums, such as the Centraal Museum in Utrecht, Kunstmuseum The Hague, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Museum Beelden aan Zee in Scheveningen and Bonnefantenmuseum in Maastricht. In the summer of 2017 several of his works were included in Art Zuid, the international sculptural route in Amsterdam curated by Rudi Fuchs.

Günter Tuzina, Und mit Rot: 17 October – 21 November 2020

Slewe Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of the exhibition Und mit Rot by German artist Günter Tuzina. The exhibition will show new works by him. In 2000, twenty years ago, he had his first exhibition at Slewe Gallery. To mark this occasion a new catalogue is published, entitled Welt, giving an overview of the last twenty years, with texts by Rudi Fuchs and Ulli Seegers. The exhibition opens Saturday October 17 and will last until November 21.

The very refined relatively small paintings by Günter Tuzina show the inheritance of the minimalist idiom of the sixties and seventies. His rectangle sized paintings 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. 

Günter Tuzina was born in 1951 in Hamburg. He lives and works in Cologne. In 1978 he had his first museum show in the Netherlands at the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven. In 2002 he had an overview of his oeuvre in the Kunstmuseum The Hague, on which occasion also a catalog was published. His works have been internationally shown and collected by several museum and public collections, such as the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, Kunstmuseum The Hague, Museum Boijmans van Beuningen in Rotterdam and the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. Since 2000 he shows regularly at Slewe Gallery.

Martin Gerwers: 3 September – 10 October 2020

Slewe Gallery starts the new season with an exhibition of new works by German artist Martin Gerwers (*1963). The exhibition opens Thursday September 3 and runs until October 10.

Gerwers, known for his monumental abstract geometric paintings, will show a new series of paintings with oblique lines and planes, and some triangular three-dimensional objects. These wooden structures of a stack of three triangular shapes are painted in his well-known subtle color range of different yellow, dark red and blue-gray.

Martin Gerwers lives and works in Düsseldorf. After his study at the Art Academy in Düsseldorf, he exhibited at Konrad Fischer and at Galerie Tschudi in Glarus and Zuoz (CH). Since 1999 he exhibited at Slewe Gallery at a regular base. His work is part of several prominent private and public collections, including the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. In 2013 he had an exhibition in the project hall of the Kunstmuseum in The Hague and in 2015 he had a solo exhibition at the Leopold Hoesch Museum in Düren. In 2018 he was commissioned to make a large art work at the Daimler office in Berlin.

You can listen to an interview with the artist on his new works by Robert van Altena here.

Meanwhile...: 29 May – 22 August 2020

Slewe Gallery is pleased to announce the (re)opening of the gallery after more than two months of temporarily closure with a group exhibition of new works, made during the recent lockdown by some locally based artists.

Please note that during the summer months of July and August the gallery will be only open by appoitment.

Artists who participate in Meanwhile... are Adam Colton, Alice Schorbach, Jan van Munster, Joris Geurts, Krijn de Koning, Lon Pennock, Michael Jacklin, Paul Drissen, Roos Theuws, Ruud Kuijer, Steven Aalders.

The exhibition, entitled Meanwhile ..., was on view from May 29 to June 27 and will now be extended until August 22. During the summer months of July and August the gallery will be open only by appointment.

The gallery is open according to the regulations of the RIVM. The gallery will allow a limited number of visitors at a time. However, the gallery offers enough space to keep a safe distance.

The next exhibition with new works by Martin Gerwers (*1963, DE) will open on September 4.

Jerry Zeniuk, Paintings: 22 February – 23 May 2020

Slewe Gallery Slewe Gallery is pleased to host the exhibition with new paintings by the Munich based American artist Jerry Zeniuk (*1945). The show opened Saturday February 22 and was scheduled to last until March 28, 2020. Due to the Corona measures the exhibition is extended until further notice. You can visit the exhibition temporarily by appointment only. You can listen to an interview with the artist by Robert van Altena on line here. 

Color is essential in the painting of Zeniuk. According to Zeniuk colors are not only carriers of emotion, but their interaction reflects social and human relationships in general as well. His recent canvases use different colored circles or dots or forms to create color interactions that create a specific pictorial space. They float on a whitish-grayish colored or raw canvas, that suggest space, occupied with light. The edges of these dots are in some cases sharp, in other vague and atmospheric. They are brought into a harmonious equilibrium and have a strong spatial effect. 'Beauty', philosophically and visually, is the ultimate goal in the paintings. Zeniuk became known in the seventies, when he participated at the Fundamental Painting show in the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam in 1975. Since then his paintings developed from a monochrome plane, in which several colored layers have been put on top of each other, towards compositions of contrasting color planes or dots next to each other.

Born in 1945 in Bardowick (DE), as a son of Ukrain refugees, Zeniuk emigrated with his parents to the United States in 1950, where he grew up in Colorado. After his study he moved to New York, where he had his first exhibition. Since the seventies he stayed regularly in Germany, participating in several exhibitions. Now he is living in Munich and he is regularly showing at Konrad Fischer Galerie in Düsseldorf and Berlin, and at Annemarie Verna in Zürich. From 1992 to 2010 he was a teacher at the Akademie der Bildende Künste in Munich. In 1999 he had an overview of his work at the Museum Lenbachhaus in Munich, Kunstmuseum Winterthur (CH) and Kunstmuseum Kassel. In 2012/13 he had an overview of his works at Museum GlasPalast Augsburg (dependance of the Pinakothek der Modene, München) entitled Jerry Zeniuk: Elementary Painting. In 2014 there was an exhibition focusing on his large monumental works at Museum Wiesbaden, entitled Not for your Living Room. In 2016 he had an exhibition at the Josef Albers Museum Quadrat Bottrop, entitled How to Paint, on which occasion a book with the same title was published with various short texts on painting written by Zeniuk himself. 

Kees Smits: 18 January – 15 February 2020

Slewe Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of the exhibition with new works by the 75-years old Dutch painter Kees Smits (*1945). Some of his new multi paneled works are compositions of new and early works from the late seventies. The exhibition shows an astonishing consistent and varied artistic development of almost 45 years. The show will open Saturday January 18 and will last until February 15, 2020. You can listen to an interview with the artist by Robert van Altena on line if you click here.

The flat Dutch landscape forms the basis for his abstract geometric paintings, in which different points of view are brought together in one image. Kees Smits builds his paintings according to his own strict formal rules, but the imagination, 'the elevation of material', as he himself says, remains essential. In his work one always recognizes recurring motifs, such as arrows, numbers, waves, spirals, eight forms, circles and open cubes, which refer to the process of making and viewing, but one also recognizes the simplified references of figure and landscape.

Kees Smits became known in 1975 for his participation in the exhibition Fundamental painting in the Stedelijk Museum. In 1990 he had an overview exhibition of fifteen years of work in the Central Museum, for which he was awarded the Sandberg prize. He has exhibited at Slewe gallery on a regular basis since the start of the gallery in 1994. Before that, he exhibited at the former Galerie Van Krimpen.