The gallery season is about to begin – the perfect opportunity to take stock of the latest trends and developments. What’s being shown and what’s not? To start with the latter: whereas identity was a popular theme in previous years, that subject matter is less prominent at the start of this season. This time, there is considerable focus on the role of technology in our society and what that can mean for the future. More on that later this week. Also worth noting is a focus on the past. In addition to a number of beautiful gallery-sized retrospectives, there is also an exhibition that harks back to 1898 and a show by an old acquaintance.
Galerie Wouter van Leeuwen
The Soul of Africa | Malick Sidibé, Sanlé Sory, Leonce Agbodjelou
West African 60s pop culture probably does not ring a bell to most. Yet the MTV generation was already introduced to this unique and colourful blend of African and Western culture in the mid-1990s. The setting of the clip of Janet Jackson's Got 'til It’s Gone (1997) was one of the countless parties Sidibé captured in Bamako in the 1960s and 1970s. Sidibé even has a cameo in it. Two years earlier, Sidibé and his mentor Seydou Keïta had had their first retrospective outside Africa, at the Fondation Cartier in Paris. After that, things progressed quickly.
Today, West African photography is trendy, especially from the post-independence period, a time of great euphoria. For a while, the future of the region looked bright. A young generation had its dreams captured in photo studios, including that of Sanlé Sory: wearing sunglasses, on a moped or as a cowboy. Meanwhile, Sidibé recorded them at parties in Bamako, which he printed on collection sheets, so-called chemises. These sheets are filled with the rhythm of independence and dreams of new beginnings. Given the international status of Sidibé, it is a small miracle that they can be seen in Amsterdam.
BorzoGallery
The patiently waiting paper | Armando
Countless artists work in multiple disciplines, but Armando (1929-2018) trumps them all. He was a writer, poet, journalist, musician, boxer, sculptor, painter and draftsman. As well-known as he was in many of those disciplines, his work as a draftsman has remained relatively underexposed.
The Armando Foundation has given BorzoGallery the unique opportunity to put together an exhibition from its collection in order to highlight the drawings of this artistic jack-of-all-trades. The selected pieces cover almost his entire working life, namely from 1954 until right before his death five years ago. The power of his handwriting is evident from the considerable amount of white on the sheets. A few twisting but accurate lines were enough for Armando to conjure up an image and draw the viewer into the drawing.
The Merchant House
Reflections | JCJ Vanderheyden
Reflections is the first retrospective in Amsterdam by JCJ Vanderheyden (1928-2012) since his retrospective at the Stedelijk Museum in 2001. In his work, Vanderheyden explores the cross-connections between science, society and art. He has exchanged painting for other media, such as video, photography, digital sound and installations, only to return to the canvas again and again. Reflections consists of both paintings and photography and, among other things, shows Vanderheyden's famous checkerboard motifs in black and white and radiant colours, paintings of airplane windows and characteristic horizons.
Martin van Zomeren
Blockbuster | Marcel van Eeden
Blockbuster is not a retrospective of Marcel van Eeden, but does go back in time. To 1898 to be precise, the coronation year of Queen Wilhelmina. To mark the occasion, the first major Rembrandt exhibition in the Netherlands was organised. The first blockbuster. It was a time as turbulent as the present, especially in our neighbouring country: the German Empire. The notion that the Treaty of Versailles made World War II only a matter of time is only partly true because many of the ideas that the Nazis later put into practice had been dormant in German society for much longer. Anti-Semitism, imperialist dreams, quasi-sciences such as eugenics and race theory… all of these already existed at the fin de siècle.
For Blockbuster, Marcel van Eeden follows German artist Hans Thoma on his journey through the Netherlands. In both his thinking and work, Thoma was strongly influenced by the ideas of his compatriot, cultural historian Julius Langbehn. The latter wrote the bestseller Rembrandt als Erzieher (1890), in which he depicts Rembrandt as an archetypal Germanic artist. From there, it was only a small step to Blut-und-Boden thinking, nationalism and anti-Semitism. The book became a more toxic cocktail of radical ideas with every edition.
m.simons
Feet of clay | Ido Vunderink
The first solo exhibition by Ido Vunderink (1955) at m.simons consists of six geometric compositions. Each painting has a colour scheme made up of three primary and three secondary colours with white on top. Vunderink has divided the six colours across the two surfaces of the middle section and the two clusters of four squares below. The strategic use of colour in combination with resolute lines creates an imbalance in the work. This imbalance also explains the name of the exhibition. Although Vunderink's work has a delicate balance, it looks like as if it could easily collapse, just like the imposing, metal statue on feet of clay from the biblical Book of Daniel.