21 december 2021, Wouter van den Eijkel
30 years of Gallery Maurits van de Laar
Gallery Maurits van de Laar is celebrating its 30th anniversary and to commemorate this, the Hague-based gallery is presenting no fewer than three group exhibitions. Equipe 2 can now be seen by appointment, it comprises work by Marcel van Eeden, Robbie Cornelissen, Martin Assig, Tobias Gerber and Nour-Eddine Jarram, among others. “I have to be able to look into the soul of an artist, whatever that means, but you can sense that immediately.”
Equipe 1 was shown earlier this autumn, now part 2 and from 15 January Départ – a group exhibition with all the artists represented by Van de Laar. Equipe 2 shows work by no fewer than 19 artists. The majority of these are relatively small works on paper, but a few artists contributed a larger work. Van de Laar has the reputation of being the drawing gallery of the Netherlands, but according to the gallery owner, there is something to be said for that. If only because he also represents painters like Andrea Freckmann, Erik Pape and Ronald Versloot and an artist like artist like Christie van der Haak who swapped painting for fabric design. In addition, there is the Austrian sculptor Elmar Trenkwalder and Zeger Reyers, who often works with living materials such as mushrooms.
Marcel van Eeden, no title (Machinery), 2016, Galerie Maurits van de Laar.
Out of the danger zone
Van de Laar has been working with a number of the artists in the exhibition since the early 1990s. Van de Laar: “Marcel van Eeden was about to graduate when I first showed him at the KunstRai in 1993. That was also my first art fair. An artist dropped out and I asked Marcel as a replacement, because I had already seen his work at Philip Peters’ Hague Centre for Contemporary Art. It turned out to be a direct hit, as it caused a buzz at the fair: have you seen those little drawings?
“The first years are of course financially difficult for a gallery and with Marcel I suddenly had someone who started to sell well. When I celebrated the gallery’s 5th anniversary, his Amsterdam gallerist, Michiel Hennus, sent me a fax that read: “Congratulations on making it out of the first danger zone.”
Diederik Gerlach, Spitzwege I, 2021, Galerie Maurits van de Laar.
There is also work by Diederik Gerlach, with whom Van de Laar has collaborated from the very beginning. Inspired by the German Biedermeier painter Carl Spitzweg, Gerlach made four small oil painting panels. Like Spitzweg's figures, Gerlach's walkers have something caricatured about them. A long neck, a graceful stride, a puzzled look. There is no shortage of humour in any case, because Gerlach painted a map for each figure that more or less corresponds to their character. For example, the strolling bachelor who looks down on the bourgeois couples has a tortuous and capricious labyrinth, and the Jesuit has a rectilinear maze that corresponds to the hermetic worldview of a monk.
Stan Klamer, What's Going On, 2021, Galerie Maurits van de Laar.
Metaphorical cartography
The drawings of maps with boats by Stan Klamer touch on the common thread of the exhibition for Van de Laar. “Klamer makes a kind of cartography in a metaphorical sense. His studio is located on the IJ, so he watches his subject pass by all day long. However, the mas, whihc often feature intricate patterns, are a way for him to organize his thoughts and his view of the world.”
Klamer's work therefore fits in seamlessly with Van de Laar's preferences: “I am hardly interested in art that is about formal or aesthetic considerations, let's say abstract art. I would like to see something of the artist's thoughts and emotions. Then you quickly come to narrative figurative art.”
Martin Assig, St. Paul #861 (Weil ich hier bin), 2017, tempera, inkt, was op papier, 39,3 x 30,5 cm, Galerie Maurits van de Laar.
Sankt Paul
The personal and narrative aspect is most strongly reflected in the St Paul series by the German artist Martin Assig. The name of the series is a reference to Paul Klee, says Van de Laar. “Not a literal reference, but in the diversity of styles and idioms that he uses side by side in his work. So did Paul Klee, who also seemed to keep many balls in the air at the same time.“
Assig started this series after he had been seriously ill. He wanted to make something in which he would be completely free. It became an ongoing series for which he canonized Paul Klee, Sankt Paul. “Basically, this series is about what it means to be human: about fear, about love, about death, but there is also humour in it. It's very spiritual and you can sense it right away. I am always looking for this; I want to feel that someone has their own source, their own world. Precisely because it is such a personal work, there is something general in it at the same time that people recognize and immediately appeal to”.
