The galleries have reopened their doors. To celebrate this in a festive way, the Amsterdam Gallery Opening Weekend will take place this weekend (22 and 23 January), organised by Amsterdam Art. In this article, we highlight a few of the exhibitions on show.
Upstream Gallery shows an exhibition by the Belgian artist Marijke De Roover, with a new video work and a series of memes. It's unfair to dismiss memes as 'funny images', they are visual documents that actually say something about the times we live in, and actually have the power to bring about social change — tip: order the free publication 'Critical Meme Reader: Global Mutations of the Viral Image' from Network culture. In the exhibition 'do you believe in life after love?', the Belgian (performance) artist shows, among other things, a humorous yet somewhat cynical and semi-autobiographical vision of her frustrating experiences as a queer woman within a heteronormative and male-oriented society.
In a duo exhibition at Kersgallery, you can view a series of colourful works by the British artist Spencer Shakespeare and the Portuguese artist Francisco Mendes Moreira. Shakespeare studied natural history illustration but was subsequently captivated by the discipline of painting. He lived in Australia for over twenty years and his immediate environment has always exerted a great deal of influence on his work — as well as his use of colour. He recently moved back to Britain: to the picturesque area of Cornwall. Shakespeare: “I am looking for a right relationship with what I see and feel.” Francisco Mendes Moreira, on the other hand, is looking for universal themes that say something about the human experience. For his drawings, collages and paintings, the artist uses oil paint, oil pastel and recycled materials like cardboard, wood and pieces of fabric.
At GRIMM on Keizersgracht, you can view the solo exhibition 'Solid Gone' by Ciarán Murphy, in which the Irish artist shows a series of newer works. His somewhat melancholic paintings seem to move between figuration and abstraction, leaving room for the viewer's imagination. In his work, the artist reflects on the world we live in, marked by a visual saturation and an abundance of screens. He plays with binary opposites, such as death and life, movement and stillness, the recognisable and the unrecognisable, the familiar and the strange.
The Ravestijn Gallery in Amsterdam programmed the exhibition 'Literally' by the Dutch artist duo Scheltens & Abbenes. In their work, they play with notions of spatiality and two-dimensionality. Their "A Stain in a Rug" series initially started as an assignment for MacGuffin magazine. From a local thrift shop, the artists borrowed worn-out carpets and with large sweeping gestures, they tried to remove the hideous stains they carried. The soap splashes not merely freshened up some colour patches but also caused surprising new patterns. Scheltens & Abbenes felt the photos deserved yet another context. For the show at The Ravestijn Gallery, the photos return to the rugs’ three-dimensionality. The original photos, the size of which had been limited by the dimensions of the magazine, are now blown up to a considerable magnitude and encased in somewhat smaller Plexiglas boxes. As a result, the heavy prints lean against the back and slightly curl up at the bottom.
In TORCH Gallery, you can see what happens when you offer an artist the position of a curator. The Dutch photographer Sander Dekker traveled all over the world and made many friends during those trips. For that reason, this exhibition shows work by his own hand, but also by various makers from Moscow, Paris and Copenhagen. This results in a multitude of disciplines: from somewhat surreal photos and drawings to a 'severed head' from (and by) the controversial Danish artist Kristian von Hornsleth.
More tips? We previously wrote about the Steven Aalders exhibit in Slewe Gallery, the exhibition by Lara Almarcegui in Ellen de Bruijne Projects and a presentation with work by Kendell Geers that is currently on show in the Amsterdam Art Gallery in Capital C, a collaboration with Galerie Ron Mandos.
Get an overview of the exhibitions on show on amsterdamart.com