This summer, Annet Gelink Gallery is proud to present the new group exhibition Scenes. Including works by Yael Bartana, Anya Gallaccio, Steffani Jemison, Minne Kersten, Meiro Koizumi, Erik Van Lieshout, Antonis Pittas, Lara Schnitger and Sarah van Sonsbeeck, this show offers the opportunity to see a wide range of artworks at the end of the season that highlights a selection of our gallery artists.
Before entering the main space of the exhibition, the viewer encounters small painting by Minne Kersten. Kersten is an artist that conducts research simultaneously through making and reading. Her paintings are at once part of a research process and an outcome, often functioning as a reminder for a title, word or thought. The three paintings at the entrance of the gallery, each show an interpretation of the concept of balance.
In the main space of the gallery, Yael Bartana’s Resurrection I and II (2020), brings together different aesthetic traditions and presents a mutational, multilayered image that alludes to the worlds of Art History and religious mysticism. Resurrection seeks to challenge the devotional and priestly nature of the art world as well as the authoritative and traditionally masculine figure of the artist, evoking a process of empathy, rebirth and transformation.
Antonis Pittas’ Scene (2022) is the outcome of a residency and research at the Van Doesburghuis, coinciding with the yellow vests protest. Originally conveiced for the Centraal Museum in Utrecht, his installation jaune, geel, gelb, yellow, of which this work is a part, looks at the heritage of De Stijl through the current political lenses and is currently on view at EMST, Athens. His work Untitled (I will close my eyes and put my finger on the map), 2016-2017 combines classical associations, grand gestures and political acts, emphasizing the tension between the mutable and passing dynamics and elements.
Lara Schnitger’s Mine (2021) and Wet Moon (2020) have a tactility that may be soft and inviting, the works’ graphic aesthetics lend a jarringly bold impact and Schnitger reflects on current socio-political themes such as abortion and the right for women to decide over their own bodies, themes that have taken on a new urgency nowadays.
Erik van Lieshout presents an Untitled (2020) drawing he did at a time when the farmers in Holland were protesting against climate measures by the government. The topic of farmers relates both to Erik's childhood growing up in an area full of farmers and relates to Erik's interest for René Daniels. Daniels had himself inspired by paintings from René Magritte's période vache.
The signs and drawings depicted in Steffani Jemison’s UV printed series Untitled (2022) derives from the unsolved case of Ricky McCormick, who was found with encrypted notes in his pockets. Here, Jemison works with an enlarged section of McCormick’s notes and uses artificial intelligence algorithms to speculatively fill missing material in the image, producing a repetitive, layered final picture. Her Untitled (2019) drawings on clear film propose opacity as a political strategy and intentional obscurity as a way of re-claiming subjectivity and power.
In the Air series, Meiro Koizumi depicts the figure of the current Japanese Emperor and questions the way in which he is to be represented, as a ruler or a god. Koizumi creates the Air paintings from existing (news) pictures on which the Emperor is shown and controversially makes the Emperor's figure disappear, leaving a ghostly emptiness in its place.
In the Bakery, Anya Gallaccio Untitled (2016) dirt drawings, which are made using dirt (earth, sand etcetera) that she collected from a road trip through desert landscapes, are on view.
Fundamental to Sarah van Sonsbeeck's artistic exploration is the investigation of the formal and conceptual qualities of gold. For her Gold Drippings #2.01 (2021), she uses gold luster on colored float glass. Van Sonsbeeck succeeds in a critical as well as poetic artistic transformation of the historical foundation of our current financial system.
Finally, Minne Kersten’s paintings Sun is Coming Down (2020), Moon Rising (2020) and Untitled (2022) give space to a moment of poetic exploration.