Albada Jelgersma Gallery is pleased to announce the exhibition CONCEAL/REVEAL, with works by Rob Johannesma, Nori Pao and Misha de Ridder; who’s work, each in their own way reveal a deeper meaning by concealing them. They represent the transcendent or that which rises above the here and now.
Rob Johannesma will exhibit works on paper from 2017-2018. He (often) takes iconic images and paints over them. In this way he raises the question of what those images are and what they mean. At the same time, he creates an image that could stand on its own. It is the direct reality that distracts or precedes what rises above it.
Nori Pao brings a video and ceramic work. The video, an animation built up from endless photos, investigates human interventions in nature. By concealing them with clay, in a literal sense, nature's imperishability becomes clear, rocks in this case, and thus show how nature transcends the here and now. Nature remains standing while time passes. In Pao’s day drawings she visually records the existence and time. Each daily drawing, that is part of a month, is inspired by a particular moment, memory, or method unique to the period it was created. On view in the exhibition will be day drawings that she made at EKWC where she currently resides. Multiple different colored clay tablets with the forms of brain halves will be on view, which almost become a landscape.
Misha de Ridder uses the camera to look differently and better at reality. For him, looking is a process of awareness, an attempt to getting closer to the mystery of what surrounds us, of which we are a part. Concentrated investigation of light, color and matter are leading in the making of his image, resulting in extremely precise compositions that are very open in their meaning.
This can be clearly seen in the works in this exhibition, work from two recent projects: "Falaise" and "high up close by". In "Falaise" it is the abstractions of the chalk cliffs in Normandy, the constant metamorphosis of the rock surface, the reflections of light and color on the sea in which our eyes keep wandering. In the work from 'high up close by', of which a publication has recently been published, it is the plastered walls of the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam where the Dutch light that enters through the high windows reveals the transcendent aspects of an age-old organic structure, created by the touch of many hands. The cliffs and the church are connected in De Ridder's precise look, in which he takes you into a magical world that is nothing less than ours with light, color and structure.