13 may 2022, Wouter van den Eijkel
Preview Art Rotterdam: international galleries
Next week, from 19 to 22 May, the 23rd edition of Art Rotterdam will take place. In and around the iconic Van Nelle Factory, art can be seen at more than 100 national and international galleries. In this article you will find a preview of what can be seen at the foreign galleries during Art Rotterdam. View the full range in the exhibition catalogue..
Real-life Tetris, that is what the sculptures of the Swedish artist Michael Johansson are have been called before. Once you've seen one of his works, you'll understand why. Johansson collects, organizes, stacks and puzzles with usually everyday second-hand objects, which he usually finds at flea markets. He sorts those objects, ranging from old books to television sets and everything in between, by colour and assembles them in one new object. Crossfade Green is no exception; the cube is made up of small lockers and cash books in more or less the same colour. Crossfade Black consists of, you guessed it, the same objects but in black.
Michael Johansson, Crossfade-green, 2021, The Flat-Massimo Carasi
Barbara Seiler - Michiel Ceulers
In Michiel Ceulers work, titles and texts on his works generally refer to events or song titles from popular culture. In this way Ceulers not only gives his work a more layered meaning, but also leaves the viewer more room for interpretation. In this case, the word Hilton does not refer to the well-known daughter and heiress of the hotel chain, but to the chain’s Amsterdam branch. The place where John Lennon and Yoko Ono stayed during their honeymoon, at the height of the Vietnam War, drawing attention to world peace and pacifism by staying in bed for six days. By referring to this historic protest, Ceulers points out that peace is not self-evident and needs our constant attention. For that reason, Lennon and Ono's action transcends the issues of the day and is always current.
Michiel Ceulers, Corporate realness / Dream nails (Oh them watermelons), 2022, Barbara Seiler
Galleria Bianconi – Jonas Lund
A Swedish artist, trained in the Netherlands, represented by an Italian gallery on display at a Dutch fair. Jonas Lund could have come up with that, as he is interested in the art market and where his works are located. Lund's work revolves around the question: how do you make a successful work of art? He focuses on power relations within the art market, using data analyses, algorithms and NFC tags. For example, the Untitled paintings that Bianconi shows are made up of style elements from paintings that did well at auctions. Lund fitted the paintings with a number of NFC (Near Field Communication) tags that keep track of where the viewer's eye rests, so that once purchased, the work continues to generate this pleasing imagery and thus never disappoints.
Jonas Lund, Untitled (83_04_27), 2021, Galleria Bianconi
Tatjana Pieters – Fleur De Roeck
It is difficult to properly describe the work of the young Belgian artist Fleur De Roeck, if only because her production consists of numerous formats and techniques. She makes meter-high paintings, small, modest sketches, collages and sculptures from wood, stone, pieces of bark, papier-mâché or concrete. She also occasionally makes installations that include various sculptures, drawings and paintings.
De Roeck grew up in the south of France and started drawing at an early age before studying Graphic Design in Antwerp. You can see that background in her use of colour, among other things. De Roeck uses a harmonious palette with lots of white. This is one of the reasons why you can describe her work as optimistic and imaginative. In her work there is room for coincidence, dreams, the mystical and the subconscious. Elements from nature, architecture, design and art history also recur.
Fleur De Roeck, Across the bridge, 2021, Tatjana Pieters
It is the first time that the work of Irish artist Sonia Shiel will be shown in the Netherlands. Shiel makes performances, sculptures and paintings – the latter two often overlap – in which narratives are central. In 2015, for example, she made a series of works, each of which was provided with a poem. In ArtForum, the effect of those poems were aptly summarized as “[they are] allusive, yet ultimately obscure”. This also applied to the series that Shiel showed at Kevin Kavanagh last year, a series in which the title of every title started with When we remember… as if it were a clue to a scene from a book or play, but which has not been developed further. Shiel is not an artist who determines everything in detail for the viewer, but initiates a possible scenario and lets the viewer speculate about what will follow.
Sonia Shiel, A place for birds, 2022, Kevin Kavanagh
