Get ready for a new edition of BIG ART this weekend (30 September to 3 October) and admire a surprising combination of more than 75 XL art installations, monumental artworks and design objects. The fair, which has been in existence since 2016, is organised every year in an iconic place in and around Amsterdam. This edition will take place in a former ammunition factory on the Hembrug site. This means that you will not spot the art on characteristically white exhibition walls, so you will get to experience the works quite differently. In this article, you can read which galleries on GalleryViewer are participating in the fair.
Gallery Bart will share work by Eirik Jahnsen, Marleen Sleeuwits & Cindy Bakker and Wim Jacobs. At BIG ART, Cindy Bakker and Marleen Sleeuwits will show an installation that they made earlier this year for Expo Bart in Nijmegen, the gallery's second location. They were inspired by the project space in which the gallery is located: the Honigfabriek. This resulted in the “Folly Factory”, a gigantic interactive installation in which visitors are invited to come up with their own compositions, using pallets that can be wheeled around with large towers of colourful blocks and balls.
Galerie van Gelder is presenting work by Lee McDonald and Henry Byrne. In his practice, McDonald investigates the ways in which mechanical processes respond to certain objects and materials, findings that he then translates into installations and sculptures that are constructed from found materials: from concrete and tape to wood and cement. Experimentation and failure play a central role in this.
Rademakers Gallery provides the fair with work by Bregje Sliepenbeek, Maayke Schuitema and Natasja Alers. Sliepenbeek's totem-shaped sculptures betray her love for craft: the artist studied jewelery design at the Rietveld Academy. At BIG ART, she shows large-scale metal artworks that feel airy, understated and transparent. Sliepenbeek: "Actually, I don't really appreciate the cold and smooth characteristics that metals have. I want to change that, convert it into something soft and feminine, make it liquid. Two years ago I spent a month in Morocco, in the middle of the Sahara. There, a girl taught me to weave. Upon my return in the Netherlands I started doing that on a larger scale, but with metal. I’m intrigued by the contrast between the textile approach of that cold, hard metal.”
Chrysalid Gallery will present a multidisciplinary installation by the Romanian-Austrian artist Zalán Szakács, who describes himself as a post-digital artist, audiovisual performer and researcher who explores media theories through the use of light, space and sound. In his work, the alumnus of Design Academy Eindhoven and the Piet Zwart Institute tries to bridge the gap between culture and technology
Josilda da Conceição Gallery is showing work by Soviet-born artist and psychologist Maria Vashchuk, who creates large-scale oil paintings that depict everyday situations from her immediate surroundings. In her work, she explores opposing emotions and concepts such as time/temporality, connected/disconnected, excited/bored and quiet/intense.
GoMulan Gallery will exhibit work by three artists at Big Art: Jonat Deelstra, Jarik Jongman and Joran van Soest. Joran van Soest's “Zeppelin” was created through a crowdfunding campaign and includes a steel installation of 10 meters long. Van Soest: “I consider the zeppelin to be a metaphor for something that can bridge the distance between my experience and that of the other. A construction so large, a structure that appeals to the imagination, that it questions and connects our frame of reference. I want to build the zeppelin and I want to make the zeppelin a space to understand each other.”
ramfoundation is presenting work by the Dutch artist Robin Kolleman, who studies the (border) area of what we consider acceptable within physical social intercourse. It focuses on three stages of contact. Kolleman: “The sight, the touch and the act of damaging, in other words: the beauty, the eroticism and death are the concepts through which my work is created. I research the (border) area of acceptance within physical social interaction; the area between closedness and vulnerability, between violence and innocence.”
NL=US Gallery shows work by the Dutch video artist, sculptor and installation artist Marjan Laaper, who is known for her brightly coloured portrait of Ramses Shaffy in Amsterdam, that you can see at the Vijzelgracht metro station on the Noord/Zuidlijn, located above the longest escalator in the Netherlands. For her often large-scale work, the artist is looking for everyday, universal human experiences and the ways in which people think and live their daily lives. She often looks for contradictory elements, which she represents in a poetic or philosophical way.
In addition, Art Gallery O-68 will present work by Daphne van de Velde, Nuweland is showing work by the South African artist Morné Visagie and at MPV Gallery you can see work by Art van Triest. Roger Katwijk shows work by Lara de Moor, Rutger Brandt Gallery shows work by Zsofia Schweger and Franzis Engels shares work by Marja Kennis and Vincent de Boer.