Mark Manders
A labyrinthian system of
thick and thin pipes and
other industrial elements, like
chimneys and container lids,
make up this landscape in
which two animal figures and
a human form have laid their
heads down to rest. They are
all made of bronze, although
the colour suggests otherwise.
The pipes, wires and chimneys
bring to mind a blackened
coal-fired power station.
Gravity has pinned all the
objects and figures to the
Mind Study, 1992–2011
Photo: Peter Cox
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Fons Haagmans
ground. Are they being fed
by the pipes or possibly
electrocuted?
Dutch sculptor Mark Manders,
who lives in Belgium, has
been working on his magnum
opus Self-Portrait as a
Building since 1986. Within
this conceptual framework,
Manders designs closed
systems in which architecture,
people and animals are
entangled. Melancholy is the
dominant tone.
Painter Fons Haagmans
of Maastricht incorporates
elements of playing cards, the
Tarot and heraldic figures in
his paintings and graphics.
Animal and plant motifs like
roses, ravens and nightingales
are also favourites of his. They
are symbolic figures whose
specific meaning may have
been lost from our collective
memory but they clearly refer
to something or someone else.
Haagmans says that he can
only use these figures once
Les Petites Misères d’Un Demi-fou, 1996
Photo: Peter Cox
he has ‘cooled them down’.
Flattened, stylised and blown
up to unusual proportions, they
lead a life of their own. His use
of stencils and stamps is ideal
for the lithograph series but
also gives Haagmans’ paintings
a print-like quality. He enlivens
the works by slopping on thick
layers of paint and adding
glass pebbles.
and currently has a collection
of fifteen of his paintings and
thirty works on paper.
The Bonnefanten Museum
has been following Fons
Haagmans closely since 1986
Arbre Bifide, 1994
Photo: Peter Cox
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Rodrigo Hernández
The striking focal point of this
atmospheric yet unfathomable
installation created by Mexican
artist Rodrigo Hernández for
the Bonnefanten Museum
is a stylised human figure.
Stripped of identifying
characteristics, he appears
to represent ‘human nature’.
The relationship between this
figure, the colours on the walls
and the other elements of the
installation is not immediately
obvious. The title of the
installation, What is the moon?,
seems to be an invitation to
set the process of associative
thinking in motion.
The key to the work is the
fragile mobile consisting
of a small white disk and
a dangling wire. The relief
of the disk resembles the
hands of a clock. According
to Hernández, the clock face
refers to a painting by Dadaist
Max Ernst (1891-1976). The
painting depicts a swimming
pool at night in which the
moon takes the shape of a
clock. Hernández’s installation
is an ode to movable and
associative thinking, in which
any form can metamorphose
into another.
What is the moon? 2014
Photo: Rodrigo Hernández
Max Ernst, Aquis submersis, 1919
What is the moon? 2014
Photo: Rodrigo Hernández
Max Ernst, detail
Rodrigo Hernández, detail
Francis Alÿs
Francis Alÿs was born in
Antwerp and currently lives
Mexico City. He is a master
of the small gesture and
the fleeting moment. The
individual and the urban
environment is a recurring
theme in his work. Every day
Alÿs scours the city, absorbed
by the daily rituals and
routines of life in a metropolis.
With imaginative, politically
aware and above all poetic
films, videos and photographs
of performances, paintings
and drawings, he documents
the city, interweaving it in
subtle ways with his own life
and activities.
Laura Lima
Guards presents one of
London’s typical tourist
attractions, the palace guards,
but with an unexpected twist.
The film begins with a single
guard wandering through the
empty streets and ends in
an alienating choreography
representing a ritual display
of power, accompanied by
the hypnotising cadence of
stomping boots. Alÿs shot some
of the footage from the vantage
points of the omnipresent
surveillance cameras in the City
of London.
The video Shoeshine, the
case containing sketches
and the tin soldiers displayed
in the adjoining space, are
a documentary and poetic
supplement to Guards. The
guard polishes his boots
every day until they shine. The
intimacy of the scene and the
devotion it expresses reminds
us that the guard in Shoeshine
is a man of flesh and blood.
This small painting, entitled
Cruiser, has an exact duplicate
that can be found somewhere
along the route through the
museum’s galleries. ‘Déjà Vu’
is the apt title of the series to
which this work belongs.
Guards, 2004
Video still courtesy of Francis Alÿs
Shoeshine, 2004
Video still courtesy of Francis Alÿs
Cruiser (diptych from the Déjà Vu
paintings), 1995. Photo: Peter Cox
‘Apparently the average Londoner is filmed something like
300 times a day’, Alÿs says.
‘That already says something
about the relationship people
in London have to a public
sphere.’
Human behaviour and social
dynamics play a central role
in Laura Lima’s art. Her work
is a mixture of performance,
sculpture and installation,
but she prefers to talk about
‘scenarios’ or ‘instructions’.
Lima makes us aware of how
we interact with the objects
around us.
Brazilian artist Laura Lima
developed her series of textile
works in a fascinating way. In
the past few months, a group
of tailors measured ten empty
Lola, 2014
Photo: Peter Cox
picture frames for suits, on the
basis of Lima’s design, in a
museum gallery converted into
a sewing studio. The frames
have been given names like
‘Miro’ ‘Lola’ and ‘Orfeu’, as if they
are family portraits. The abstract
canvasses are Lima’s concept
and design, but the execution
demonstrates the inventiveness
and craftsmanship of the tailors.
Lima entices us to look at the
time-honoured painting through
different eyes.
Miro, 2014
Photo: Peter Cox
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Grayson Perry
Rory Pilgrim
In the Walthamstow Tapestry
Grayson Perry explores the
emotional role and meaning
of brand names in our lives,
and by extension our quasireligious relationship with
consumerism. The tapestry
depicts a human life,
punctuated with an endless
series of commercial brands
that the individual encounters
along the way. Stripped of
their logos and thus their
identity, the brand names
walk alongside the subjects
of the portraits: ordinary
people going about their daily
business, caring for their
children, walking the dog,
skateboarding and – of course
– shopping.
This long, traditionally woven
tapestry is reminiscent of the
world-renowned, seventymetre long Bayeux Tapestry
(c. 1070), depicting the
heroic events of the Battle of
Hastings (1066). The name
Every one of Grayson Perry’s
vases or tapestries is a marvel
of craftsmanship and devotion.
There is a dissonance in the
unusual scenes that adorn his
otherwise traditional works.
With image and text, Perry
tells stories of social injustice,
hypocrisy and his alter ego,
Claire.
The four-part etching entitled
A Map of Days was conceived
as a self-portrait of Grayson
Perry. To be more precise, a
self-portrait as a fortified town,
whose walls could be seen
as the artist’s skin. When he
was working on this piece, at
the end of each day he would
make note down the date
on the precise spot he had
come to. The time that passes
during the creative process
is a metaphor for the process
Walthamstow refers to a
suburb of London where Perry
kept a studio for many years.
This tapestry was woven at
Flanders Tapestries in Wielsbeke near Kortrijk in Belgium.
Walthamstow Tapestry, 2009
Photo: courtesy Rowley Gallery
A Map of Days, 2012–2013
Foto courtesy Victoria Art Gallery
of shaping and reshaping
an individual. In Perry’s
interpretation, the ‘I’ is not
a simple, unchanging thing,
but rather a lifelong process,
a work in progress. At the
centre of the image is an open
space. Neither a pearl nor
a nexus, the ‘self’ is nothing
more than the ever-changing
layers of life experiences. In
Grayson Perry’s words: ‘My
sense of self is a tiny man
kicking a can down the road.’
After a period of intense
collaboration, writing and
drawing is a way to reflect
and move forward for the
British performance artist Rory
Pilgrim. The drawings are a
distillation of the countless
diagrams, notes and writings
that Pilgrim works on every
day. They are very personal,
like diary entries, which is
precisely why he exhibits
them. When Pilgrim interviews
people, he wants his subjects
to open up and give honest
answers. He believes it is only
fair for him to show the same
vulnerability.
Rory Pilgrim is an engaged
performance artist. He is
the director of individual and
collective experiences that
inspire us to think about
cultural prejudices, inequality
and social discontent.
Untitled, 2013-2014
Photo: Pascale Leenders
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Chaim van Luit
Bob Eikelboom
Pierre Huyghe
Cornerstone (2013) is a
work in two parts: a chunk of
limestone from a marl quarry
cave in South Limburg and
a video loop. The video is a
recording of Van Luit sawing
the rock out of the cave,
placing it on a homemade
portable stretcher and
dragging it out of the darkness
into the daylight. Cornerstone
shows us a journey through
time and the birth of a
sculpture.
The painting Medusa (2014) is
the second work by the young
Dutch artist Bob Eikelboom
that the museum has acquired
recently. Bob Eikelboom is a
distinctive representative of
the youngest generation. In his
work, ‘dignified’ monochrome
abstraction melds with a pop
vibe and, as he puts it: ‘bling
bling and souped-up cars’.
Today’s young artists are
looking at future of recycled
images: the world of facebook
and soundcloud is the new
reality that Bob Eikelboom and
his generation relate to.
The installation Crystal
Cave by French artist Pierre
Huyghe is based on a visit
to a famous crystal cave in
Mexico with a diverse group
of people that included a
mathematician, a shaman and
a mineralogist. Here Huyghe
has laid out memorabilia from
the excursion in a theatrical
display on a large diagonal
platform. The photograph,
drawing, geometric sculpture
and geodes (rocks with
a crystal-lined cavity)
are ‘souvenirs’ that the
professionals took with them
or made to document their
experiences.
Chaim van Luit is a young
artist who refers to himself
as a painter but also makes
videos, sculptures and
installations. He has a
particular fascination for
places known only to a few
and places where there are no
people.
His paintings are often
curved, round or sprayed with
car paint. Some are actually
monochromatic magnetic
panels decorated with magnets
rather than painted forms.
Cornerstone, 2013
Photo: Pascale Leenders
Pierre Huyghe recent
retrospective, featuring a
painted dog, a bee colony
and a hermit crab, received a
great deal of attention. With
his work, the focus shifts
from object to experience.
Huyghe examines how we are
influenced by film and internet,
and experiments with different
ways of exhibiting.
Crystal Cave, 2009-2013
Photo: Peter Cox
Medusa, 2104
Photo: Gert Jan van Rooij
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Stansfield/Hooykaas
The Elsa Stansfield of
Scotland and Madelon
Hooykaas of the Netherlands
began working together in
1972, developing projects
with a spiritual orientation in
which modern technologies
like film, audio and video enter
into relationships with natural
forces and materials, such
as sand, glass and copper.
Under the name Stansfield/
Hooykaas, they began
creating video installations
in 1975, garnering great
fame as European pioneers
of video art. In their 32 years
of collaboration, Stansfield/
Hooykaas created more than a
hundred and fifty works of art.
Elsa Stansfield died in 2004.
Stansfield/Hooykaas
described this work as follows:
‘This environment is a play
on the similarity between
the horizontal lines of the
landscape, the line structure
of the black-and-white video
images and our boundaries
within this space.
This project began in January
of this year when we visited
Agora Studio in Maastricht,
a city situated near three
national borders.
What is a border? A natural
boundary in the landscape
like a river or hills, an artificial
borderline dividing a space, the
beginning of something else...
When one goes to look for a
boundary it is so often like Zen
– nothing there, you pass over
it – it is an invisible line.’
See Through Lines, a video
environment by the artist team
Stansfield/Hooykaas, was
first exhibited at Agora Studio
in Maastricht in 1978. Agora
Studio focused particular
attention on media art and
worked closely with the Jan
van Eyck Academie, where
many video artists, including
Stansfield/Hooykaas, worked
on their projects.
See Through Lines, 1978
Photo: Stansfield|Hooykaas|Bonnefantenmuseum
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Mary Heilmann
Mary Heilmann regularly
reprises motifs from her earlier
work. As a result, her entire
oeuvre
continues to resonate in her
current work. A good example
of this is the flourescent
Positive-Negative. Here
Heilmann combines her
classic spiderweb motif with
the more recent ‘crashing
waves’. She links childhood
memories of a laid-back surfer
culture with the history of
formal abstract experiments of
the 1970s.
Heilmann’s two wooden chairs
entitled Rietveld-Remix I and
II support her unwavering
claim that she creates her
work in order to share certain
experiences with the public.
Heilmann’s improvisations
on Rietveld seem to invite
the viewer to sit down.
Unfortunately, the chairs are
too fragile to allow this. Heilmann wrote in 1987:
‘There is always a memory of a
place or event – and through
concentrating upon the sense
and mood of that memoir, I try
to let the painting have the
feeling that the memory has
for me.’
Positive-Negative, 2011
Photo: Peter Cox
Marijn van Kreij
Rebecca Morris
For this painted work on paper,
Marijn van Kreij was guided by
the effects of a page printed
in halftone from a historical
Stedelijk Museum catalogue.
The work referenced here is
the ‘Black Square’ by Kazimir
Malevich, an influential
Russian avant-garde artist.
For new work, Van Kreij takes
inspiration not only from
artists he admires and art
historical writing, but also from
traditional and modern printing
techniques, design history and,
in this case, the standard layout
of a museum catalogue.
Rebecca Morris’ work inspires
fresh interest in the craft of
painting. She plays with paint,
brushing, pouring, rubbing,
spraying and layering it on the
canvas. She uses different
textures, works with alternating
drying times and combines
contrasting qualities like
transparency and opacity.
Rebecca Morris’ drawings
can be considered studies
but they are also autonomous
works. Abstract images like
this lattice or weave emerge
from the dynamic of the brush
technique; the process of
creation is central.
Though each element in the
piece evokes a historical
style or artist and the image
resembles a design for a
garden, it is the material
stratification of the work as a
whole that is expressed.
The immediate and endless
reproduction of an image,
the relativity of the notion of
‘original’ and the appropriation
of collective images are key
concepts in Van Kreij’s work.
Rietveld-Remix #1, 2004–2008
Photo: Peter Cox
Untitled (Black square, late 1920s), 2011
Photo: Peter Cox
Untitled (#02-12), 2012
Photo: Peter Cox
Untitled (#112-12), 2012
Photo: Peter Cox
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Duan Jianyu
Evi Vingerling
René Daniëls
In her colourful canvases,
Chinese artist Duan Jianyu
appears to deliberately avoid
an overly virtuoso, academic
painting style. Humour and
irony are the top notes of the
absurdist scenes of people,
flora and fauna she presents
to the viewer. In a cheerful
mix of folksy trivialities and
art historical references,
the artist sketches a world
adrift. She reveals humanity’s
struggle with identity and
the disorientation resulting
from the constant migration
between countryside and city,
nature and culture, East and
West.
Evi Vingerling’s evocative
paintings are playful and often
inspired by other images. This
one is based on photographs
of a mountain range taken from
an aeroplane. In her painting
process, Vingerling conceals
the original context and every
possible historical and symbolic
connotation. The painted image
can no longer be traced back
to a recognisable ‘picture’,
so the viewer’s attention is
automatically drawn to the use
of colour, the brushstrokes and
the composition. Vingerling’s
depictions are never entirely
abstract. The viewer is
encouraged to use their own
imagination to fashion an
image from the remaining
fragments.
The influential Dutch painter
René Daniëls created his
colourful, hastily painted
canvases in the 1980s in
response to the stringent
American abstraction of
his predecessors. Daniëls
preferred to seek inspiration
in France and Belgium where
artists like Francis Picabia
and René Magritte were
playing with language, image
and double meanings with
refinement and humour. In
1982 Daniëls characterised
his stratified approach as
‘visual poetry’. He no longer
works since suffering a brain
haemorrhage in 1987.
Joëlle Tuerlinckx
Two pale yellow plumes
seem to be escaping from a
cylindrical form decorated with
yellow dots in this mysterious
red canvas by René Daniëls.
We see shadows of human
figures and eyes observing the
scene. Letters form the word
CYCLO(O)P.
The title Het Romeinse
wastafeltje (The Roman Wax
Tablet) refers to the writing
tablets coated with bee’s
wax used by the Romans.
Text written in the wax could
be scraped off so that the
tablet could be reused. Is the
writing tablet a metaphor for
memory in Daniëls’ work? The
artist seems to be comparing
the concept of the clean
slate to the short memory
of an art world constantly in
search of new hypes. The
letters CYCLO(O)P allude to
the one-eyed giant of Greek
mythology, possibly hinting at
the old proverb: in the country
of the blind, the one-eyed man
is king.
Sino-European still collection No. 2, 2013
Photo: Vitamin Creative Space
Behind the keyhole in this
painting of an exhibition –
which is itself an overpainting
of another painting of an
exhibition – lies the gaping
paradoxical void of artistry.
Painting on the Flag calls to
mind the Dutch tricolour, but
also the Stars & Stripes and
the famous Flag paintings
by Jasper Johns (US, 1930).
Daniëls painted the piece
while living in New York.
Painting on the Flag, 1985
Photo: Peter Cox
A striking element of Joëlle
Tuerlinckx’s work is the
transience of any given image.
The Belgian artist often makes
comprehensive site-specific
installations based on a
repertoire of simple actions,
such as tearing up paper or
drawing lines. Like a magician,
she fools us, using illusion to
conjure up moments of beauty.
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The modest floor case
contains a number of items,
including some painted
twigs and wires, small
pieces of wood and a spatial
construction made of wire.
Using a checked tea towel
as a base, Tuerlinckx creates
a playful mix of physical
material and optical and
painted illusion. The artist has
fashioned a floor painting that
could be reproduced in dozens
of variations. The booklet
refers to the former owners of
the work.
The two partly painted wooden
beams are larger versions of
the twigs in the case. This is
illusion with a capital I: one of
the two beams is wrapped in a
photographic image of itself.
Untitled, 2013
Photo: Peter Cox
Het Romeins wastafeltje, 1983
Foto Peter Cox
Untitled, 2003
Photo: Peter Cox
Tissue Copy Wijlre Castle / Hedge House,
2003–2005. Photo: Peter Cox
Mark Manders
Michael Dean
Neo Rauch
René Daniëls
Robert Mangold
Peter Doig
In this work we see four
wooden chairs supporting a
heavy tabletop on which a onelegged figure is held in place.
Like an arrow drawn back in a
bow, the figure is suspended
in a state of tension with
cables, wooden beams and a
counterweight.
In this work we see two
cartoonish concrete tongues
draped over a freestanding
folded plate made of cast
concrete. The sculpture
evokes all kinds of sensations
and imagery: from salt licks,
laughter, comics and paintings
by Philip Guston to sex, pieces
of meat and torture. The title
is the key to the work. Said
aloud, the first part – ‘LLLL’ –
sounds like: ‘Elelelel’. Dean has
translated the acoustic sound
and physical sensation of a
moving tongue into form and
matter.
This monumental tondo is part
of a series of works on paper
created by the German painter
Neo Rauch around 1993. The
stereotypical human figures
carrying a shaft of light,
holding a rocket-launcher
and crouching in a foxhole
are the distinctive features
of the work. The dynamic of
the picture, which is strewn
with both recognisable and
unfamiliar elements, appears
on further consideration to be
a collage of obscure actions.
This expressively painted
seascape from 1979 is an
early work by René Daniëls.
He began making his colourful
paintings a few years later.
There is more to this scene
than a boat bobbing on the
waves referencing our past
as a fishing nation. Perhaps it
refers to his fellow artist Bas
Jan Ader who, in search of
artistic freedom, had gone to
sea three years earlier. The
unfortunate man disappeared
during his transatlantic
crossing. The rudderless
boat is probably an allegory
(symbolic representation) of
the difficult and uncertain life
of an artist.
American artist Robert
Mangold rose to fame in the
mid-1960s with his ‘shaped
canvases’, paintings in shapes
other than the usual rectangle
or square. His work is
geometric, abstract and almost
always painted in a single
colour.
In contrast to Peter Doig’s
other work in which the paint
is applied in thick, colourful
layers, Girl in White with
Trees is fashioned from thin,
transparent veils of paint
in myriad tints of grey, blue
and green. Doig painted
a sinister, leaden world
where the treetops are like
snakes and the fluttering
snowflakes like will-o’-thewisps. The picture combines
the photographic effect of a
camera flash illuminating the
snowflakes and people’s faces
with the story of Little Red
Riding Hood. In the original
version of the fairy tale by the
brothers Grimm, the girl was
blond. Blond hair symbolised
innocence. Doig’s girl lost in
the woods is as white as show,
but a frightening reddishgreen apparition looms up
behind her.
Manders applies the classical
laws of sculpture in his
work, with natural forces like
traction and tension playing an
important role. He alternates
‘old-fashioned’ materials –
bronze, iron and wood – with
‘imitations’ made of unfired
clay. This sculpture is a kind
of trompe-l’oeil: the figure and
the counterweight are actually
made of much lighter epoxy.
Mark Manders, the artist
behind the acclaimed Dutch
exhibit at the Venice Art
Biennale, designs closed
systems in which architecture,
people and animals are
entangled.
Michael Dean’s sculptures,
made of cast concrete and
other industrial materials,
often elicit an unusual
physical response. Hardened
cement may appear to be
soft and flexible. Dean’s art
is rooted in his writing. His
sculptures depict words,
sounds and letters, but in a
three-dimensional font of his
own creation. As a result, his
work seems unfamiliar and
inexplicable to the beholder.
Rauch’s human figures are
almost always shown working,
but their work seems to lead
to nothing. A critic once
called them ‘sleepwalkers in
a theatre full of assumptions’.
The letters in the picture
form the words lot, loos and
lost. One meaning of LOT is
plumb line or balance. The
series marks a transition from
Rauch’s abstract-expressionist
style to a colourful figurative
style reminiscent of the socialrealist painting propagated
by the state during the artist’s
childhood in the former
Eastern Bloc.
Mangold is part of the first
generation of painters to
examine the basic principles
of painting itself as a subject.
He focuses in on the function
of size, shape, surface, line,
colour, texture, material and
method; or as his American
colleague Frank Stella put it:
he studies ‘what a painting is
and how you go about making
such a thing’. To Mangold a
painting is a flat surface to
which paint is applied, stripped
of illusion.
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Doig always works from
existing images, such as family
snapshots and album covers.
This scene is based on a
photograph of his daughter
taken from a window in his
home in London.
Peter Doig, who grew up
in Canada, is best known
for his timeless, mysterious
landscapes, which evoke
the work of great Modernist
painters like Gauguin and
Vuillard.
Mind Study 2010–2011
Photo: Peter Cox
Lot, 1993
Photo: Peter Cox
Ring Image B (Variation), 2008
Photo: Peter Cox
llll (Working Title)
Analogue Series (muscle), 2013
Photo: Michael Dean
Untitled, 1979
Photo: Peter Cox
Girl in White with Trees, 2001
Photo: Peter Cox