31 march 2023, Flor Linckens
Abstract nights and decontextualized imagery
Until 8 April, Galerie Stigter van Doesburg is showing a duo exhibition with work by Thijs Kauffmann and Wolfgang Messing. Kauffmann shows us an abstracted representation of nocturnal Amsterdam and Messing paints decontextualised elements from the city.
In the exhibition, Thijs Kauffmann shows his series "It's jazz", for which he captures Amsterdam at night from a car. He uses a 16 mm film camera without a lens, so that the light hits the celluloid directly. This results in an abstract representation in a colour spectrum. In moving images, the effect is enhanced by the background noises that are so characteristic of nighttime Amsterdam, from motorised vehicles to cheerful passers-by. The artist has been using this method since 2007, when he captured several sunsets in Morocco in this way. Kauffmann divides his time between the Swedish village of Kovikshamn — with only a few hundred inhabitants — and the city of Amsterdam, which this contrast allows him to see with new eyes. He works in various disciplines, ranging from paintings and film to sculpture and photography. The artist studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy and the Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam. Together with Patta, he created a special Capsule Collection.
Stigter van Doesburg also features a series of figurative and mostly monochrome oil paintings on paper by Wolfgang Messing. They are a bit reminiscent of old and blurry photos and often have something ominous about them. His work is marked by allegories and illusions and reflects, among other things, life in the city and fragments from the news and advertising. For this, the artist draws from newspapers, found books, advertisements, archives, museums and social media. Messing's practice constitutes an investigation into painting in the age of digital reproduction, referring to Walter Benjamin's famous book 'The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technical Reproducibility' (1935). The artist completed a residency program at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam.
