Photo artwork Henk Visch
LE MARIAGE ARRANGÉ
the choice by Jos van der Sommen
15.12.2024 - 12.01.2025
With work by
Takeshi Makishima
Els Nouwen
Mari Reijnders
Toni van Tiel
Birde Vanheerswynghels
Henk Visch
15.12.2024 4pm Opening
Opening by Henk Visch
09.01.2025 7.30 Movie night
Scattered around the House, discover various films by William Kentridge and
Jimmie Durham, among others, from the collection of House Henk Visch.
12.01.2025 15.00 Finissage
With music played by Takeshi Makishima.
As a starting point for this exhibition, guest curator Jos van der Sommen chose a sculpture by Eindhoven artist Henk Visch entitled Le mariage arrangé. He also borrowed the title of the exhibition from this sculpture.
“I experience the sculpture Le mariage arrangé (2021) by Henk Visch as a kind of longing for painting or perhaps it is an image that wants to say: “I would like to be a painter”.To go on about this desire to paint, in every room of the Albert van Abbehuis, there is a sculpture by Henk Visch that might enter into a conversation with one or more paintings.
Five artists have been invited to this conversation, four of whom I did not know personally. I have seen work by them in the past and their images remained anchored on my retina. Thus, this exhibition will be a conversation between diverse approaches, different imagery, two- and three-dimensional work, from which hopefully a suitable companion will emerge”, Jos van der Sommen said.
Following this ‘mariage arrangé’ by Jos van der Sommen down its natural path is to diverge and detour through personal memories and the power of suggestion, where nothing is quite as it seems and the journey is as meditative as it is winding.
Takeshi Makishima
employs a personal visual language through which experiences from everyday life and memories from the past are rebuilt in images. Both playful and profound. The relationship between the beauty of unrestrained space and a fixed framework cannot be separated in his work.
By changing the form, the presence of the motif changes and the boundaries of the imagination shift.
_.jpg)
Toni van Tiel
is a sculptor on paper. His works are two-dimensional, but he builds up his drawings as if the entire public space emerges from the paper. He creates monuments, fountains and roundabouts as sculptures in imaginary public spaces. They are reduced sculptures. In drawings, the structure does not have to be right. He feels no need to realise these sculptures in three dimensions. They exist on paper and the viewer's imagination does the rest.
Els Nouwen
combines photorealism with intuitive painterly actions. The photographic part is overpainted, distorted or supplemented as a distrustful reaction to the beautifully seductive image. A confluence of impulse, intuition and realism. These rebus-like works are complex. We see the development of a narrative, but also its abrupt breakdown. Optical illusions competing with figurative image fragments.
Birde Verheerswynghels
In the series of portraits of her ‘chosen family’, Birde Verheerswynghel explores vulnerability within the context of queer identity. She transforms big questions about love, fear, ways of life and relationships into the microcosm of these portraits. They are people with whom she has a personal connection: unique identities that connect in the subculture of the queer community. The characters in the works are not portraits in the sense that they are made after life. The motifs in her paintings may be based on photographs, a colour, a movement or a gesture.
Mari Reijnders
works mainly on a standard portrait format of 30 x 35 cm. Not on canvas but on 4 mm plywood. He shows his work in series from ceiling to plinth or in room-filling constellations. His work has no fixed style or theme, which allows him to develop a multitude of ideas that take any direction under the influence of the surrounding context.
Henk Visch
puts great value on creating an open mental space in which his sculptures thrive. Both the titles and their appearance activate the viewer's imagination and evoke numerous associations with one's own life. The poetic language of the titles by no means provides the key to the works but are equal components of the visual image. Language and imagery. Man and the objects. Perception and the imagination.
