During this edition of Art Rotterdam, Galerie Weisbard presents two visual artists who are not satisfied with reality. Escapism is not foreign to them.
Throughout the exhibition The Imaginary Friend at the Chabot Museum, Anne Mieke Backer (1950) demonstrated how an imaginary friend can offer comfort in difficult times. Her creation Von Tuzzi (pronounced fan-ta-sie) lived in a tower in Rotterdam's Wijnhaven around 1980. Train passengers could only watch the daily activities of this eccentric apparition for seven seconds. Was this stranger real or an illusion? Almost half a century later, Backer's dream friend comes to life again thanks to technically brilliantly enlarged Polaroids, originally made by Pieter van Oudheusden (2013 †).
Ellis Holman (1997) creates Composed Oceanscapes, of which Weisbard is showing three works at Art Rotterdam, play with gravity. In her handmade plexiglass artworks, filled with water, it seems as if she can stop time. The restless visual artist dangles between past and future. She needs to capture the now in this moment and also give it a twist. To pause and breathe. That surreal world cannot exist and yet she has created it.
Ellis Holman comes from a family of carpenters. She studied Product Design at the Willem de Kooning Academy where she was recognized as one of the Best of Graduates in 2022. A versatile visual artist - in addition to installations and objects, she makes short films and is busy with photography - she also likes to tell stories.
Two publications accompany Backer's exhibited work: the photo book The Imaginary Friend and the essay: De gedroomde vriend. Anne Mieke Backer graduated from the AKI art academy and the Academie de Meuron in Switzerland. Her first novel will be published later this year.