07 july 2023, Flor Linckens
Tranquil landscapes, abstract realities and spatial illusions in Galerie Roger Katwijk
Until 15 July, Galerie Roger Katwijk in Amsterdam presents a group exhibition with seven artists that the gallery represents. After 'Personal Choices', 'Constructed Choices' and 'International Choices', 'Natural Choices' is the last part of a four-part series of jubilee exhibitions in honour of 20 years of Galerie Roger Katwijk. The exhibition shows work by Annemieke Alberts, Henny van der Meer, Pieter Obels, Gerard Prent, Charlotte Schrameijer, Hans Schuttenbeld and Tessa Verder.
The spatial paintings of Annemieke Alberts function as an abstract translation of indefinable and seemingly boundless spaces, in which indoor and outdoor spaces appear to merge seamlessly. If you peek through your eyelashes, it almost seems as if you're looking at the Dutch landscape from an airplane window, if it weren't for the colours, that don't seem to have a direct relationship with reality.
Tessa Verder is interested in skies and landscapes and the sublime quality of nature. She bases her paintings on a twofold archive, consisting on the one hand of carefully composed photographs taken by the artist herself during her travels, and on the other hand a collection of registrations of classical paintings by artists such as Caspar David Friedrich. She was recently invited by the Museum Kunst der Westküste on the German Wadden Island of Föhr, resulting in paintings that are based both on the nature of the island and on the museum collection. That way, the artist captures different time periods in her paintings.
Tessa Verder, Breeze of Light 9, 2023, Galerie Roger Katwijk
Sculptor Pieter Obels hopes to make us look at our everyday reality with different eyes, by highlighting shapes in new ways, in dynamic and seemingly weightless, curved Corten steel. He is interested in the ways in which the Dutch have cultivated the landscape over time, but also in the mechanical actions that were necessary for that.
Charlotte Schrameijer depicts her concerns about the state of the world in her papercut collages. These are concerns that are widely shared, from war and global warming to polarisation and income inequality. Schrameijer: “In my collages, I use photographs of areas where this unrest plays out, where landscapes bear witness to the disruption. I cut them out and combine them with poetic images of nature. I have the fragments apparently mirrored so that a new landscape is created with a new coherence, which seems harmonious, but isn,t.”
Charlotte Schrameijer, Home is where the heart is V, 2023, Galerie Roger Katwijk
The exhibition at Galerie Roger Katwijk in Amsterdam offers a beautiful final chord of the four-part jubilee exhibitions in honor of 20 years Galerie Roger Katwijk. Each artist invites the visitor to look at the world around us in a different way.
