To mark its 40th anniversary, Lumen Travo Gallery continues the dynamic group exhibition celebrating the gallery’s legacy and long-standing influence on Amsterdam’s contemporary art scene since the early 1980s.
Following a successfull first part dedicated to radical and politically engaged works, the anniversary exhibition resumes after the Christmas break with a new presentation.
Focused on the more playful and provocative side of the gallery’s programming, this new chapter brings together works by Guillaume Bijl, Rombout & Drogste, Dianne Hagen, Evelyn Jansen, Hans Klasema, Rik Lina, Aldert Mandje, Emiel van Moerkerken, Nathalie de Pascalier, Luigi Serafini, Skal, Joost Swarte, Huub van Vroonhoven, among others.
Humor, surrealism, and visual surprise are here recurring elements, often used as tools to question perception and meaning.
The exhibition unfolds as a journey through imagination and dreamlike associations, blurring the boundaries between presence and absence, reality and fiction, narrative development and pure abstraction.
Many of the artists presented share a vision that connects directly to the gallery’s early beginnings. The exhibition recalls the spirit of the late 1980s: an atmosphere of salon-style surrealism, cigarettes, philosophy, and a euphoric exchange of ideas, when different practices came together in the first location of the gallery, Marianne van Tilborg’s apartment in Amsterdam’s Spuistraat.
Join us for the opening day on Friday, 16 January, 17:00–19:00, during which Dianne Hagen will present a live reading of three poems - “What’s Up”, “And Thus”, and “Time”. The soundscape created by the artist for the occasion will underline and intertwine the poems into a single, fluid performance.
The exhibition will run until 28 February 2026.
Image: Marianne van Tilborg next to a work by Skal. Kunst, HP magazine nr. 4, January 28, 1989. Credits: Ronald Hoeben