ART Rotterdam 2026
PHOEBUS• Rotterdam: ‘Z.t. / apocalypse / transition’
Artists come to terms with the earthly troubles.
Yet they continue to ‘conjure upwards’ in/through/around/with their visual work.
They create unapproachable, beautiful works, even with heavy content. They transform compositions of maps of ‘war zones’ into ‘starry skies’ or into ‘Warflowers’. Or bring together colored pencil drawings in an artist’s book using two historical novels containing references to politics (Greenland) and philosophy (Wittgenstein). Two vanitas portraits of sculls are finished with extreme precision—and brought into the contemporary realm by first rasterizing the images—cross-stitches become pixels. Two wall objects in whitewashed MDF – images of a male and a female skull – look at each other eternally and seem to whisper ‘You will be my mirror, as I will be yours’...'
Participating artists:
Donato Amstutz, Simon Benson, Célio Braga, Esther Bruggink, Stefan Gritsch, Sarah van der Lijn, Erik de Lyon, Jan Smejkal, Rick van Strien.
Additional information:
Joachim Bandau, Regula M. Müller (book publication), Joos van de Plas, Ken’ichiro Taniguchi (concept Hecomimap).
Each artist writes a short text accompanying the exhibited work. Look at the names of the artists.
Images above: Gritsch, van Strien, Benson, Amstutz