Marijn Akkermans
dal 13/4/2012 al 18/5/2012
Segnalato da
13/4/2012
Marijn Akkermans
Galerie Gabriel Rolt, Amsterdam
Square Moon. Mysteries and metaphors bound in artist's works, played out through the materiality of his drawings. Their subjects feel familiar yet alienated like collective narratives that have assumed lives of their own.
Galerie Gabriel Rolt is proud to present ‘Square moon’, the Dutch artist Marijn
Akkermans’ third solo exhibition with the gallery. Mysteries and metaphors bound in
Akkermans’ works, played out through the materiality of his drawings. Their subjects
feel familiar yet alienated, reminiscent of film noirs and fairytales, like
collective narratives that have assumed lives of their own.
Though their impact is black and white, Akkermans’ drawings are complex
configurations of translucencies and opacities which impart subtle differentiations
of colour. He builds up his images with an unorthodox mix of techniques, using ink,
coloured pencils, gesso, poster paint and collage. These multiple modes of
expression unsettle the pictorial illusion, creating different orders of realism.
They describe figures that are shadowy and ethereal, a part of shifting currents of
darkness and light through which their minds appear to wander.
Peopling Akkermans’ pictures are archetypal characters that have twisted free from
convention. Nurses, teddybears and businessmen have cavorted in previous works,
while strange shifts in scale suggest a child’s vulnerable and unknowing
perspective. Here though the figures are less recognizable and their roles more
ambivalent. Dawn depicts a resting woman supporting two smaller figures asleep on
her lap. Behind her pile sleeping bodies whose coiling shapes echo the lines of the
foreground figures so that the whole composition becomes a satisfying rhythm of
serpentine curves. What appears at face value to be a peaceful image of maternal
protection has sinister undertones of collective suicide.
Abstraction repeatedly teases these figurative works, sabotaging their realism and
embroiling their narratives in meta-fictions. Akkermans seems to be implying the
existence of different layers of reality through his build up of unlike pigments.
However, the metaphors remain enigmatic — both in individual works and cumulatively
across the exhibition. Accompanying the larger images are numerous small drawings,
their liquid marks evoking both biological forms and modernist abstractions and
presenting the viewer with a forest of signs. In these, the artist directly explores
the effects of drawing, collapsing the barrier between material and idea. Akkermans
has described their influence on his large drawings being like the seepage of water;
and it is as though the ink itself were suffused with meaning.
Marijn Akkermans was born in 1975. He studied at the Dutch Art Institute and the
Hogeschool voor der Kunsten Arnhem. His solo exhibitions include ‘The Fraud of
Mister HQ’, Drawing Centre Diepenheim (2010); ‘The Future is Old’ (2009) and ‘Lets
Wander Over Yonder’ (2007), both at Galerie Gabriel Rolt, Amsterdam. He has
participated in the group exhibitions ‘All About Drawing — 100 Dutch Artists’ at the
Stedelijk Museum Schiedam (2011); ‘Op Papier’ GEM, The Hague (2010); ‘Op Papier
Gezet’, Centraal Museum, Utrecht (2010); and 'Fixterne - 100 Jahre Kunst auf Papier
von Adolph Menzel bis Kiki Smith', Landesmuseum Schloss Gottorf, (2009). He is the
recipient of the van Bommel van Dam Award (2010) and his works can be seen in many
museum and private collections. Akkermans lives and works in Amsterdam.
Opening Saturday 14 April, 17
Galerie Gabriel Rolt
Elandsgracht 34, Amsterdam
Wednesday - saturday or by appointment 12.00 - 18.00 hrs
Free admission