19 june 2023, Flor Linckens
Koen Vermeule: painter of fleeting moments
Until 1 July, BorzoGallery in Amsterdam is presenting a solo exhibition by the Dutch painter Koen Vermeule. Visually, his paintings resemble snapshots and they betray his fascination for human behaviour in large metropolises. The painter is particularly known for his landscapes and casual street scenes. In this exhibition, his love for contrasting light comes to the fore, which tends to render his characters into anonymous silhouettes.
Artists have a special gift of making us look at everyday scenes with fresh eyes — similar to when you come back from a long vacation and look at your own city through the eyes of a tourist. Artists challenge us to escape more often from the habits and routines that limit our perception of the world around us. Too often we bury our eyes in the reflective black screens of our phones, making us miss the world around us. Artists like Koen Vermeule invite us to slow down for a moment, to observe our surroundings with a certain openness.
Koen Vermeule, Light Grid II, 2023, BorzoGallery
Koen Vermeule's urban characters are usually in their own world, in a moment of pause between acts. They are lost in thought, cut off from the world through headphones or looking for contact through their telephone. They have briefly activated their mental screensaver while waiting for their train or watching a sunset in slow motion. Vermeule's paintings are often based on quick photos that he takes, in the Netherlands or during one of his many travels. In a sense, they reflect our individualistic society. He then executes the resulting compositions on paper and canvas, in a style that is often instantly recognisable and, in his own words, often indebted to art history.
For his most recent works, Vermeule was inspired by the production of the Dutch youth film Dojo, in which he was involved in the capacity of judoka and choreographer. The moment just before a shoot in particular fascinates him, that moment of supreme concentration in which actors finds themselves just before it all has to happen. The strong light contrasts are also frequently featured in these situations, albeit in a more artificial form.
Vermeule's work has previously been shown in the Rijkmuseum, BOZAR, the Stedelijk Museum, Kunstlerhaus Bethaniën, the Kunsthal, the Noordbrabants Museum, Singer Laren, Stedelijk Museum Schiedam and the Fries Museum, among others.
Koen Vermeule, Up, 2023, BorzoGallery
