Category: Curated Exhibitions

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Exhibition ‘Three of a Kind’

The exhibition ‘Three of a Kind’ presents the work of three painters who share an interest in ambivalent forms of figuration: Milla Aska, Veronika Hilger, and Paula Zarina-Zemane. Their paintings depict situations or figures that cannot be identified in one, singular way but remain open to different readings. Yet in the choice of colors and the treatment of surface and paint, each of the artists develops a specific voice and unique character.

The figures in the work of Milla Aska (1993, based in Helsinki) appear to be behind a veil. They do not seem to be fully developed, but rather in the process of becoming visible and tangible. This impression is evoked through Aska’s approach to building up a painting with thin, translucent layers of paint. “My paintings seek shape around themes such as materiality and bodily sensations – for instance, how something feels against the skin, or what warmth feels like. I am intrigued by forms that seem to be something specific but don’t quite reveal themselves.”

The paintings of Veronika Hilger (1981, based in Munich) combine elements of landscape, still life, and portrait. Hilger is a specialist in ambiguous figuration. The shapes in her paintings have a familiar, often organic touch but are not specific enough to name. The artist presents them on an elementary level, stripped of details. As a result, the forms have a dynamic appearance: a foot could be a leaf, a leaf could be an animal, an animal could be a stone. “The organic is something that you can easily dock onto as a human, and that creates a kind of identification potential,” the artist noted.

In the works of Paula Zarina-Zemane (1988, based in Riga), the distinction between human and environment is blurred. The works oscillate between abstract compositions formed through clouds of color, and more concrete outlines of landscapes. The paintings are usually the result of a fast process, and they do evoke a sense of speed through the traces left by the brush. Yet the reduced composition also sets a reflective mood. “I am trying to get the result in one go,” the artist noted.

Three of a Kind opened on 30 June 2022 at KOGO Gallery in Tartu, Estonia and runs till 3 September 2022. The exhibition is curated by Jurriaan Benschop. It is part of the exhibition series Past is the Present at the Kogo Gallery in 2022.

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Young Americans in Thessaloniki

Painting Adrienne Elyse Meyers

This exhibition presents the paintings of three American artists who focus on space in their work, Michelle Jezierski, Joseph Kameen and Adrienne Elyse Meyers. The interiors, landscapes, and other constellations they create are not just physical spaces, but also spaces of the mind that evoke memories and suspense, triggering perception and the imagination.

Geometric and organic shapes come together in the work of Michelle Jezierski. To find a compositional structure, she shifts and breaks observed spaces into vertical, horizontal, or diagonal bands, rearranging them to introduce an abstract rhythm into the image. Coming from a family of musicians, Jezierski likes to approach painting through aspects such as rhythm, harmony, or dissonance.

In the domestic interiors of Joseph Kameen, the everyday order of things seems disrupted. Objects have special powers, making us witness moments of alienation or wonder. A play of light and shadow leads the attention through the rooms. “The subjects of my paintings, both figures and objects, are in the process of coming to terms with their surroundings,” the artist explains.

In the works of Adrienne Elyse Meyers, empty interiors or fragments of rooms give opportunities for speculation about things that might have happened next door, or that are about to occur. The action itself is not depicted; it is just the stage that we see in the paintings. “I play into the image’s uncertainties,” the artist remarks. “What is in the next room, outside the window, or filling a silhouette is undisclosed (…)

Young Americans opens at Donopoulos IFA in Thessaloniki on December 17th, 2021 and will be on view till 27 February 2022. The exhibition is curated by Jurriaan Benschop. Image: Adrienne Elyse Meyers, Adjoining, 2020, oil on canvas 25 x 20 cm.

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A Grammar of Gestures in Athens

Exhibition view A Grammar of Gestures

‘A Grammar of Gestures’ is an international painting exhibition. Human figures, animals, or elements of landscape appear in the works on display, but these motifs present themselves neither in a singular, unambiguous way, nor as a hard subject matter. Rather, the center of attention is on the dynamics of shapes, on the ability of forms to flip and change appearance while you are looking at them. This shifting has to do with the way the motifs are executed, with the grammar of painterly gestures that is involved in the conception of the works.

For David Benforado (image left) the canvas is both a possibility to evoke a landscape as a surface that reflects an inner state of being, and a panel of thoughts. What appears to be a night landscape might change into an internal view when reading the title of the work ‘Ultrasound.’

Béatrice Dreux (image right) uses simple motifs like a moon, a cloud, or a rainbow, and from there, she develops the forms in a process of layering and detailed surface treatment until they gain an inner strength. For Dreux painting is a language in itself. When she paints, she is not aiming to tell a story, or make some statement about subject matter. Instead it is about texture, gesture, color, and form, and how these elements together on the canvas speak to us directly.

“A Grammar of Gestures” is on view till 18 March 2022 at Kourd Gallery in Athens. With Maria Capelo, Mark Lammert, Michael Markwick, Beatrice Dreux and David Benforado.

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‘A Matter of Touch’ at Torstrasse 111 in Berlin

A Matter of Touch, Exhibition - Curated by Jurriaan Benschop.

Touch is an important aspect of painting. The temperaments of the artists in this exhibition can be felt through the way they have worked and touched the canvas, be it with a firm, decisive brushstroke, a light touch to create transparency, or the sanding off of layers to create flatness or roughness. A whole range of sensibilities can be stored in a painting, speaking to us even before we identify what is actually depicted.

Though keeping distance has become the norm in public life, in the realm of paintings, we can be reminded of physical encounters and intimacy, and enjoy a close perspective. The artists in this exhibition embrace the tactile and are interested in paintings as physical matter. Yet their focus is also on less tangible aspects of the artworks, such as luminosity, wonder, or absence. The importance of light can be felt throughout a range of different motifs and vocabularies.

The works have been collected from studios on both sides of the Atlantic. Due to the pandemic, not all artists are able to be present for the opening, yet their works offer us an artistic dialogue across borders. The paintings find a temporary home in the ruinous beauty of the Kunst- und Projekthaus Torstrasse 111. Located in the center of Berlin, the space evokes the time when the city offered itself as an artistic Freiraum.

Participating artists: Nikos Aslanidis, Thessaloniki; Thomas Brüggemann, Berlin; Michelle Jezierski, Berlin; Joseph Kameen, Aiken, South Carolina; Kiki Kolympari, Athens; Adrienne Elyse Meyers, Chicago; Grit Richter, Hamburg; Rubica von Streng, Berlin         

Curated by Jurriaan Benschop for Kunst- und Projekthaus Torstrasse 111, 10119 Berlin. Project management: Ulrike Seyboth & Ingo Fröhlich, www.torstrasse111.de

Exhibition from 16 July till 30 August 2020.

Image above: installation view with works by Rubica von Streng and Nikos Aslanidis.

MORE exhibition views

Painting Exhibition A Matter of Touch, exhibition view, Adrienne Elyse Meyers, Rubica von Streng, Jurriaan Benschop
Exhibition A Matter of Touch, works by Adrienne Elyse Meyers (back) and Rubica von Streng (front)
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Taking Root at KIT Düsseldorf

In a world full of conflicting interests and beliefs, how do artists root themselves? Where do they find their sense of direction? These questions underlie the exhibition Taking Root. The assumption is that the eleven artists presented here did find some roots. They have developed a clear and insistent focus in their practice, and that is what gives their work depth.

For a tree, life without roots is not possible. It needs a stronghold, right underneath, in order to grow and stay firm, to endure storm and thunder, and to maintain resilience. One can assume that similarly, human beings find some “nutrition” in the places where they grow up. Yet, those places are not the only ones where developing roots happens. Artists can pick their roots, collect them on their way through life, or search for them in places where they are not yet familiar. After all, humans are mobile beings. And for humans, roots are not just a matter of physical circumstances; they can reside in thoughts, memories, beliefs, and traditions.

Taking Root brings together the work of eleven artists. Some of these artists grew up close to nature; for others, the city has been their natural environment. Some of them are young artists, who in recent years have started their own studio practices. Others have been working for decades already, and have had more options to develop their roots. Together, the participants span two generations of contemporary artists. Most of them come from Europe, yet in terms of landscape and cultural climate, their backgrounds are diverse. One is from the USA, which is itself a country with roots in Europe. 

In times when God is declared dead, or has been hijacked by terrorists, when political leaders can be liars and fakes, the question is where to find understanding and beliefs, and additionally, where to find the confidence and context from which to act? The answer goes inside, into the imagination and reflection of the artists. And it leads into the traditions that have shaped them. These eleven artists have been selected for this show not necessarily because their work is about roots, or depicting it as a theme, but rather because their work has roots. The artists have been able to ground themselves in the present, and find a sense of direction through anchor points in nature, religion, art, or culture. They have developed an interest that brings their work into focus.

The artists in Taking Root do not usually find their artistic incentives in the daily news or in politics. Their knowledge is more indirect, coming from stones, stock photos, walks, landscapes, icons, paintings, plants, children – from all possible sources. There are many situations and observations that guide them. They do not preach or illustrate a particular belief. They make their work as artists, through searching and delving and developing their own discipline – that is enough of a statement. You can sense in their work that they know something.

Even though art is not necessarily sacred territory, it offers stretches of land where a different world is possible – not corrupted, and not adrift. It can offer an environment where you actually want to spend time, a place that is nurturing for the mind, body, and soul. The Kunst im Tunnel offers a good shelter, with solid walls, to create some distance to the physical and digital traffic around, to the hustle of city life, to the problems of our times. The generous tunnel space filled with the works of eleven contemporary artists allows a time out – and offers itself as a place to reconnect and take root.

KIT, Mannesmannufer 1, Düsseldorf, exhibition runs through 26 January 2020 and is open Tue-Sun 11 – 18 h

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Come Close & Step Back

Pia Krajewski, Irina Ojova

Exhibition at Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin

Curated by Jurriaan Benschop
Opening 11 April 2019, 7 pm

This exhibition brings together the work of two painters who were selected for the 2019 Winsor & Newton Residency at the Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin: ​Pia Krajewski​ (Cologne, 1990) and ​Irina Ojovan​ (Chisinau, 1988).

While Pia Krajewski maximizes the presence of a figurative motif through monumental close-ups, Irina Ojovan seems interested in the opposite movement, reducing the clues that could identify the motifs underlying her paintings. What the artists share is an interest in taking images from the exterior world, isolating them, and transforming them into a reduced painterly vocabulary. To grasp the paintings in their full scope, the viewer has to move closer to and further from the canvases, collecting sensations of texture and touch from close by, or seeing the overall image from a more distant perspective.

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Gerlind Zeilner in Thessaloniki

Gerlind Zeilner ‘Line of Thought’ exhibition at Donopoulos IFA, 2 Feb – 11 March, 2019, curated by Jurriaan Benschop

The paintings of Gerlind Zeilner are the result of both attentive observation and a vivid imagination. The Vienna based artist collects impressions from what she calls “the theatre of life” as she observes it in bars, on the streets in her hometown or outside in a mountain village. First she makes quick sketches of scenes; later in the studio, things start to change shape as the artist looks at them, and this transformation is intensified in her paintings.

The characteristic colorful lines in the paintings are not only there to indicate the shape of an object, a person, or building – they also act by themselves to transmit a variety of expressions, ranging from fragility and hesitation to firmness and wonder. As a whole, the paintings embody a sensibility and a way of looking, more than a specific scene.

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Exhibition ‘Content is a Glimpse’

‘Content is a Glimpse’ is an international painting exhibition presenting the work of five artists: Anna Tuori (Helsinki), David Schutter (Chicago), Fiona Rae (London), Jorge Queiroz (Lisbon), Mark Lammert (Berlin). Five artists with different backgrounds present works that imagine, form, and deform the human figure, or otherwise allude to the body. The image above shows a work from the ‘Walkers’ by Anna Tuori, of which there are three on display.

The exhibition borrows its title from the words of Willem de Kooning, who pointed to short moments of insight – each encounter like a flash – that can occur while looking at a painting. The figuration in de Kooning’s work is not something that can be pinned down as an objective fact, rather it resides and is hidden in painterly gestures, color marks, and abstraction. It comes and goes, it is part of the dynamics of perception. This quality can also be found in the works of the five artists participating in the exhibition.

Curated by Jurriaan Benschop

On display from 24 November 2018 till 9 February 2019

Catalog launch: 26 January, 4-6 pm, open event.

Efremidis Gallery, Ernst Reuter Platz 2, Berlin Charlottenburg.