15 october 2021, Wouter van den Eijkel
Interview Gummbah about his first solo exhibition Paintings | ''I took advantage of listening poorly a lot''
This weekend Gummbah's first solo exhibition opens at Stigter Van Doesburg. During the installations of Paintings we talked to him about his Ikea method, why 95% of everything hanging in museums is quite bad and about the benefits of listening poorly.
For many readers of de Volkskrant, Gummbah's drawings are the (almost) daily dose of absurdism that makes world news just that little bit more pallatable. Gummbah (in real life Gertjan van Leeuwen, NL, 1967) has nothing to complain about popularity, as became apparent when de Volkskrant made a report about his fans on the occasion of his 25th anniversary as a cartoonist for the newspaper. Many of them turned out to have built up private collections with clippings of their favourite drawings. That’s quite something, because in times of social media being cut out is nothing less than a privilege.
GUMMBAH, Dick, 2017, Galerie Stigter Van Doesburg.
So it is quite remarkable that Gummbah did not have a solo exhibition before. That is now changing with Paintings. As of today, Stigter Van Doesburg presents an overview of the paintings he made over the past three decades.
This is your first solo exhibition. Is this also your first time exhibiting in a gallery?
No, I was affiliated with the Wetering Galerie before, where I was in a group exhibition: Peter van Straaten and Friends, I was one of the friends. I stayed there, because it clicked with Michiel Hennus. He closed down the gallery a few years ago and then I waited until he had passed away.
GUMMBAH, Avignon, 2021, Galerie Stigter Van Doesburg.
And after that it was all silent?
I had read somewhere that it was not done as an artist to approach galleries yourself, so a few years ago I published a book with my painting (From the Bottomless Pit, 2019) hoping I would be picked up, but it remained quiet. Then I tried again on Instagram, but also to no avail. In the end I took Oscar van Gelderen as my agent and here we are.
Paintings is an overview of the paintings you made over the past 25 years, do you think there is a common thread in there?
The works were created over the past 25 years, but the emphasis is on the last ten years. As you can see, I'm don’t tend to stick to one particular style, but a constant is that I can’t do without text. In the De Pont museum there is a small work by Luc Tuymans, Der diagnostische Blick. It is well painted, but that title completes the work. Text steers a work – albeit in the wrong direction at times. The combination between text and image is my forte.
Is there a difference between your work for the newspaper and your free work?
With the cartoons for the newspaper, after having laughed, the reader may still think “luckily I do better in life”, while with the paintings, as a viewer, you are more part of the joke, so to speak.
GUMMBAH, Zuipkeet, 2014, Galerie Stigter Van Doesburg.
How do you proceed?
He points at the work D.D.R.: Some works are made out of pure peevishness, as long as that peevishness is pure enough, while other works were created by listening poorly. For example, I listened to that Shocking Blue cover of Nirvana so many times that I started hearing something different in the lyrics.
I took advantage of listening poorly a lot. By the way, that's a good tip for younger readers: read the newspaper with only one eye and listen poorly to lyrics and see what finds you come up with. That may seem like a method, but it has to come naturally.
25 years is a very long time during which you can make a large number of works, how did you come to a selection for this show?
That selection is ingrained in my working method. I have developed my own Ikea method for this. To demonstrate the quality of their kitchens, the kitchen department of Ikea always has such a mechanical arm that opens a kitchen drawer all day long. When I finish a painting, I take it home and hang it above the couch. Every time I enter the living room, it has to work. Sometimes a work turns out not to be strong enough after a few weeks and then it goes back to the studio.
GUMMBAH, I want my funeral to be a big party, 2020, Galerie Stigter Van Doesburg.
So you test your own work for a long time and quite intensively?
Some works hung above the sofa for months. Partly to find out how strong it is, but partly because of the lack of interest in my work from the art world.
In your cartoons for de Volkskrant you regularly ridicule modern art and museums, isn't it strange that your work can now be seen in a gallery?
That seems like a split, but it makes sense. 95% of what is on display in museums is pretty bad. However, a few things are terribly good. That goes for other areas as well, by far most of the jazz will be bad, but those few records that remain make collecting the others worthwhile. In those cartoons I ridicule the conversations people have and the effort they make to appreciate that 95%. I can appreciate bad art, by the way, because it makes you think “I can hang here too”, while good art makes you feel discouraged.
