Netherlands v. Germany
Painting / Malerei
21/10/2006 t/m 21/01/2007
Schilderkunst Nederland – Deutschland Malerei examines the current revival in
neo-romantic, neo-realist painting. It does so by pairing off three Dutch artists
with
three German ones: Matthias Weischer (D) with Aaron van Erp (NL), David
Schnell (D) with Tjebbe Beekman (NL), and Martin Eder (D) with Rezi van
Lankveld (NL). The aim
is to expose the similarities and differences between their work, in terms both of
content and style.
Recent years have seen a boom in neo-romantic and neo-realist painting. This
has been reflected in
the escalation of prices at international auction to levels unprecedented in the
contemporary art market. The revival in no way involves the kind of retour à
l’ordre that occurred in the 1920s and ’30s. Today’s neo-romantic and neo-
realist painters experiment as easily with modernist elements like form,
brushstroke and colour as with the academic rules, often in one and the same
painting. Moreover, since the advent of post-modernism, it has once again
become possible to laugh and cry in art without becoming toe-curlingly
sentimental or slushily romantic.
For this exhibition, guest curator Jhim Lamoree and GEM director Wim van
Krimpen, have chosen artists whose work resounds with the fever of time. They
share a romantic view of life which leads them to express not so much an ideal
as the uncertainty of existence.
The three representatives of new German painting - Martin Eder, David Schnell
and Matthias Weischer - were all born in West Germany, but deliberately chose
to train at art schools in the former GDR, where emphasis is still placed on the
craft aspects of art. Their work is deliberately exhibited in combination with that
of Dutch contemporaries.
The work of Aaron van Erp and Matthias Weischer is hermetic and oppressive.
Both focus on the psychological confusion caused by external pressures. In the
case of Weischer, the claustrophobia of the narrow living spaces he depicts is
almost physically palpable; in Van Erp’s paintings, the melancholy and hope still
present in Weischer’s work descend into mania.
Tjebbe Beekman and David Schnell produce landscapes reflecting the condition
of our society. Beekman, who lives and works in Berlin, allows social tensions to
infiltrate his compositions, while Schnell addresses the myth of nature. Both
make occasional explicit use of scientific perspective, drawing the viewer almost
literally into the scene.
Rezi van Lankveld en Martin Eder work with the subconscious mind:
obsessions, frustrations and nightmares of every kind. Whereas Van Lankveld
seems to conjure her pictures out of thin air, Eder browses through art history
and the mass media to produce his semi-surreal images.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a publication containing articles by Jhim
Lamoree, Thomas Girst, Paola van de Velde, Ken Johnson, Maura Egan, Henk
Pijnenburg, Norbert Jocks and others.
GEM, Stadhouderslaan 43, The Hague, open Tues-Sun, 12-6 pm, www.gem-
online.nl.
