Farewell Nouvelles Images!
[Click on the pictures to enlarge]
© Villa Next Door 2018
Content of all photographs courtesy to (the estates of) the artists and Galerie Nouvelles Images, Den Haag.
Bertus Pieters
Farewell Nouvelles Images!
[Click on the pictures to enlarge]
© Villa Next Door 2018
Content of all photographs courtesy to (the estates of) the artists and Galerie Nouvelles Images, Den Haag.
Bertus Pieters
There is good news and there is sad news.
Let’s start with the good news: there is a wonderful summer show at Nouvelles Images.
It is curated by Michael Tedja (1971) and it has become a, what you might call, particularly rhythmic exhibition.
That results sometimes in some, what i would call, high density works like Carlson Hatton’s (1974) works on paper, Miek Hoekzema’s (1973) video, Radcliffe Bailey’s (1968) collages or even some colourful works by Moshekwa Langa (1975).
They are “high density” in that they have more to show in one square foot than the eye can absorb in one view.
One colour or detail will distract you from another and so make your eyes jump, sometimes from dreams to nightmares.
That in fact also happens with the whole show; it plunges you from one aspect of society into another, from Samson Kambalu’s (1975) almost meditative Boat video’s – presented as a kind of diptych – to Richard Bott’s (1972) alternative disidentified icons for different internet media and to Ronald Ophuis’ (1968) macabre paintings.
Being happy that art galleries are one of the few places without irritating background music, i think this show makes clear that there is enough music in the works themselves and the way they are selected and presented.
The sad news is that this is Nouvelles Images’ penultimate show.
The gallery will close its doors on October 1st.
It means the oldest and one of the biggest commercial galleries in the Netherlands will stop existing.
Especially for The Hague this will be a great loss as the gallery’s space makes it more like a small museum.
Sad though this is, i look back with gratitude for what Nouvelles Images has shown.
As such, the present show might be an inspiration for whatever the future will bring.
[Click on the pictures to enlarge]
© Villa Next Door 2018
Content of all photographs courtesy to all artists, Galerie Nouvelles Images and to all other with this show associated galleries.
Bertus Pieters
Revealing is an impressive group show as one may expect in grand old Nouvelles Images. Running right through the generations, it shows works by Toon Teeken (1944), Joost van den Toorn (1954), Omar Koubâa (1979) and guest artist Marie Civikov (1979).
Few Dutch painters have such a great mastery of applying such a rich diversity in colour, texture and meaning as Teeken has.
Necessarily only part of this can be seen in a group show, but what an examples they are!
On show are some portraits of great names, both concise and expressive, and a recent series of smaller but very rich paintings called Interaction.
Van den Toorn is another artist with an extremely rich visual language.
He is best known for his sculpture, often gifted with a great sense of humour that seems to touch the seriousness of his subjects without becoming killingly ironic.
In this exhibition he shows an enormous series of ceramic plates and saucers with portraits of figures of national and / or international fame.
Koubâa is an artist who uses paint as a trigger for his great imagination.
In the exhibition he shows collages and paintings.
In his works, especially the bigger ones, it is not just worthwhile wandering through all the details but also to focus in and out, as each one is a cosmos with a constellation of its own.
His abstractions are not technical ones but seem to be ways to find common ground with the abstract idea of the world itself.
Civikov is digging into her personal family history and as such in European history, but her work is much more than that.
Different modern and postmodern concepts and ways of seeing are used, from abstraction and surrealism to her very personal and almost painfully clear use of colour and light.
Her figures are extremely crisp and clear as if they try to cling to memory without allowing it to become sentimental.
[Click on the pictures to enlarge]
©Villa Next Door 2017
Content of all phjotographs courtesy to the artists and to Galerie Nouvelles Images, Den Haag.
Bertus Pieters
The title [At] Home covers only part of the present exhibition at Nouvelles Images. For instance guest artist Fernando Sánchez Castillo (1970) shows his video Guernica Syndrome, Azor.
Azor was Franco’s yacht. Sánchez bought it and had it demolished to neat parcels of junk.
The definitive demolition goes on overnight and looks like a faint echo of the demolition of Guernica.
But it also shows that the trauma of the Franco era is still there in Sánchez’s homeland Spain (and sadly we can still witness it in recent developments there).
History, perception and its traumas are also part of Hamid El Kanbouhi’s (1976) great and impressive installation Take a LeaFe,
It tries to balance between different cultures, expectations and facts.
Marjan Teeuwen (1956) shows her photo series Destroyed House Gaza, probably the most literal interpretation of the show’s title.
She shows the destroyed house as a stage of remembrance, its trauma and its re-ordered emptiness.
In a way they may remind you of Anselm Kiefer’s paintings of the 1980s.
Remembrance and destruction, the more they become traumatic the more they become monumental as well.
As such Nouvelles Images has made a very coherent and moving show in which the aesthetics of all three artists communicate very well.
Demolition and distortion and us trying to find a way, a place and a reason in them, traumatic as they may seem, have an aesthetics of their own.
Earlier works by El Kanbouhi and Teeuwen are adding to these aesthetics.
[Click on the pictures to enlarge]
©Villa Next Door 2017
Content of all photographs courtesy to the artists and Galerie Nouvelles Images, Den Haag.
Bertus Pieters
Cosmic and earthly explorations are being carried out at Nouvelles Images gallery, by four artists:
Ton Kraayeveld (1955), Rinke Nijburg (1964), Sara Rajaei (1976) and Amos Mulder (1982).
The last two are guests to the gallery and show videos and photo works that give the whole exhibition an edge.
Kraayeveld shows modernism, the style that tried to shape an ideal world, but he paints it in a desolate way, abandoned and senseless.
There are two videos by Mulder on show in diffuse footage about the interpretation of dreams and UFO’s.
No, don’t shrug your shoulders, this is good and compelling stuff (though seats, and a place with less reflection in the monitors would improve the experience).
Nijburg sees the sublime in the cosmos and the divine on earth.
Although he has some impressive bigger works on show i personally prefer his smaller ones.
It is as if the vastness of the universe is best experienced in these smaller gems.
Rajaei shows photographs and a video.
They deal with man’s relationship to time and landscape.
The video is a good almost meditative central piece to the show.
[Click on the pictures to enlarge]
© Villa Next Door 2017
Content of all pictures courtesy to the artists and Galerie Nouvelles Images, Den Haag.
Bertus Pieters
After the sad loss of Erik Bos last winter Nouvelles Images gallery has a new manager.
Marie Jeanne de Rooij has the ambitious task to give both continuity and new impulses to this oldest of Dutch galleries.
Her first exhibition shows works by four artists.
It is remarkable that she didn’t choose to organize a big group show to close the ranks.
She clearly chose to close the ranks more aesthetically and substantively.
Her experience with big spaces obviously helped her in this big gallery, making one big show loosely based on one idea: landscape.
Jan van der Pol (1949), combining in his paintings landscapes-as-found-footage from different sources, gives an idea of present day painted reality.
There are some fine drawings by Van der Pol on show as well.
L.J.A.D. Creyghton (1954) photographed landscapes of the Western Front of World War I, roughly from the northern Ardennes to the southern Vosges.
He also photographed ‘souvenirs’ from these places.
Using photography as a more or less spiritual medium his works connect well with works by invited artist Awoiska van der Molen (1972) who internalises landscapes with this still more or less miraculous medium.
The few small works by Auke de Vries (1937), one of the doyens of the gallery (who has a big exhibition in Museum Beelden aan Zee at the moment), show sculpture as part of an invisible landscape.
As a whole this fine and strongly reflective show underscores the space – or the different spaces – of the gallery itself.
[Click on the pictures to enlarge]
© Villa Next Door 2017
Content of all pictures courtesy to the artists and Galerie Nouvelles Images, Den Haag
Bertus Pieters
Art fairs aren’t the most exciting places to see real surprises and Art The Hague is no exception, in spite of it calling itself ‘quirky’.
To be honest, compared to last year the ascending line seems to have levelled.
In the offices next to the hangar (places where you might expect something interesting in the very short tradition of this fair in this place) there is little reason for excitement.
Although some interesting items are on show, the arrangements are a bit messy (the best presentations are the rooms of Livingstone gallery and Rento Brattinga), and the Blueprint presentation shouldn’t even be mentioned.
Central to the hangar, which serves as the main hall, is Nouvelles Images gallery’s presentation of works by Auke de Vries, one of the grand old men of Dutch sculpture.
Further on in the hangar it was the usual stuff, including – of course – some real gems.
Still, i know it is a hell of a job organising an annual art fair, but it would be about time to outgrow a bit the sedate image of this town.
However, the best place to be is outside and behind the building: it’s Dirty Daisies, a co-operation of 15 artists from The Hague and Amsterdam.
Dirty Daisies is curated by Steef Crombach and there is some good stuff on show.
The artists are: Candela Bado, Zeno Beikircher, Yair Callender, Daniel Dmyszewicz, Frederik & Jacob, Doris Hardeman, Josje Hattink, Bas Kaufmann, Koolen & Van de Lande, Tobias Lengkeek, Leslie Nagel, Jeannette Slütter, Marnix van Uum and Victor Yudaev.
[Click on the pictures to enlarge]
Content of all pictures courtesy to the artists and galleries
Bertus Pieters
Nouvelles Images is celebrating its 55th birthday this year.
It is the oldest gallery in the country so it is a venue with a history, which is more or less reflected by the present festive group show.
Works by some thirty artists are on show of which you can see a few aspects here.
No need to say that it is better to go and make your own choice.
Anyway: happy birthday Nouvelles Images and many happy returns!
[Click on the pictures to enlarge]
Bertus Pieters