Innes, Walsh, Davenport, Drissen, Aalders: Works on Paper: 5 November – 17 December 2016

From November 5 until December 17 Slewe Gallery will host the exhibition Works on Paper: Callum Innes, Dan Walsh, Ian Davenport, Paul Drissen, Steven Aalders. All five artists are from the same generation and internationally known as painters, having built up an abstract vocabulary each in their own way. The exhibition will also be on view during Amsterdam Art Weekend from November 24 until 27.

Washing away paint and exposing the ground is characterisitic for the painting process by Scottish artist Callum Innes (*1962). Exhibiting at Slewe Gallery in the late nineties he has currently a solo show at Museum De Pont in Tilburg from October 15 until February 26, 2017. His main gallery is Frith Street Gallery in London.

American artist Dan Walsh (*1960) is known for his playful minimal abstract paintings, in which he explores ‘process generated images’. Having Paula Cooper Gallery as his main gallery in New York, he showed regularly at Slewe Gallery. In Spring 2019 he will have a solo exhibition at the Bonnefantenmuseum in Maastricht.

London based artist Ian Davenport (*1966) is like Innes one of the most important abstract painters of his generation in Britain. With his technique of pouring paint he has reached a refined surface and imagery. Very thin lines and subtle colors are a result of his highly controlling hand and esthetic eye. Since the start of his career he is represented by Waddington Custot in London.

Paul Drissen (*1963), who lives and works in Maastricht, makes paintings with a collage technique and with casein tempera on canvas. He uses elements from the modernist tradition in an almost nostalgic way. His works has been collected by Bonnefantenmusuem Gemeentemuseum The Hague and Stedeijk Museum Amsterdam a.o.

The geometric abstract painting by Steven Aalders (*1959) are traditionally made with oil paint on linen, in which the heritage of modernism of Mondrian and the American Minimal Art has been processed. His work had been included in the by Rudi Fuch curated show Excitement in the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam last Summer.

The exhibition will also be on view during Amsterdam Art Weekend from Novemer 24 until 27. For more information please visit www.amsterdamart.nl

Joris Geurts, New Watercolours: 17 September – 29 October 2016

Slewe Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of the exhibition with new watercolours by Joris Geurts. It opens September 17 and will run until October 29.

Joris Geurts is known for his lyric abstract paintings, drawings and prints. They are assiociatively built up, but transparantly layered and traceble. Graphis elements float on deep purple blues and yellow greens, giving associations with the kosmos or landscape. The new watercolours are made on long horizontal sheets of paper, on which a broad brushstroke is the main theme. 

Geurts was born in 1958 in Oss (NL). After his study at the AKI in Enschede, Geurts started his career at Art & Project Gallery in Amsterdam in the early eighties. Since 1995 he shows at Slewe Gallery on a regular base. In 2001 he had a show at Noordbrabants Museum in ’s-Hertogenbosch, on which occasion a catalog had been published Purple Blue and Lemon Yellow, giving an overview of his work, with texts by Bert Jansen and Henk van Woerden. In addition to his painting practice he also works as a composer of music. His works have been collected by several important public collections, such as the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam, Rijksmuseum Twenthe, Enschede and the corporate art collections of the AkzoNobel Art Foundation, ABN AMRO, KPN, Bouwfonds and AEGON.

Domenico Bianchi: 28 May – 2 July 2016

Slewe Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of the exhibition with new works by Italian artist Domenico Bianchi (*1955). The exhibition opens Saturday May 28 and will run until July 2, 2016.

Bianchi is known for his paintings made with his own developed technique of mixing wax and oil paint, sometimes combined with Palladium leaf. His images with a perpetuum mobile motive derive from computer program stills. The exhibition will show also some new works on paper in addition to some paintings and some small silver works.

Work by Bianchi will also be on view at the exhibition Excitement at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, curated by Rudi Fuchs, from May 27 through October 2.

Bianchi, born in 1955, lives and works in Rome. He studied at Fine Art Academy in Rome. He career started in 1977 with his first solo show at Ugo Ferranti in New York. In the eighties he became known as one of the emerging artistst of the so-called La Nuova Scuola Romana and exhibited his work alongside Arte Povera artistst such as Kounellis and Mario Merz. He had his first show in the Netherlands at Riekje Swart in 1980. Several European museum made solo shows of his work, such as at the Stedelijk Museum in 1994, and at MACRO in Rome in 2003. He participated in several Venice Bienials, in1993 as a solo artist. Since 1998 he shows regularly at Christian Stein in Milan. Slewe Gallery shows his work since 2009.

Günter Tuzina, Duo: 23 April – 21 May 2016

Slewe Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of the exhibition Duo by German artist Günter Tuzina. The exhibition will show new works by him, both paintings and drawings. The exhibition will open Saturday April 23 and will last until May 21. There will be a music performance by the artist in collaboration with musician John Snijders Saturday 23 April at 4 pm. It will take about 20 minutes.

The very refined drawings and paintings by Günter Tuzina show the inheritance of the minimalist idiom of the sixties and seventies. His rectangle sized drawings in mostly dark blue, red and green colors look like windows. They are cut by expressive horizontal, vertical and diagonal lines. These lines and angles are not quite perfect, which give them an emotional significance. It contrasts sharply with the anonymous, industrial perfection of Minimal Art.

Günter Tuzina, born in 1951 in Hamburg (DE), lives and works in Cologne. In 2002 he had an overview of his oeuvre in the Gemeentemuseum The Hague, on which occasion also a catalog had been published. His works have been internationally shown and collected by several museum and public collections such as the Gemeentemuseum The Hague and the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. Since 1999 he showed regularly at Slewe Gallery. In 2011 he had another presentation at the project room of the Gemeentemusuem The Hague.

Irma Boom, Under Cover: 12 March – 16 April 2016

Slewe Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of the exhibition Under Cover specially curated by the Dutch graphic designer Irma Boom (*1960). The exhibition opens Saturday March 12 and runs until April 16.

The exhibition of Boom will show a selection of specific books designed by herself along with a selection of books she considers crucial in the history of bookmaking. On the occasion of the exhibition Boom has designed a multiple (book), entitled Hommage à Kelly. It is published in a limited edition of 99 copies, each numbered and signed.

Boom has made over 300 books, 100 of which are in the permanent collection of the MoMA in New York City, Centre Pompidou, Paris and the Art Institute in Chicago. In 1996 the 2,136 page thick SHV Think Book she became internationally known. For this book she was both the editor (with Johan Pijnappel) and designer. The Book Weaving as Metaphor for the American artist Sheila Hicks, was awarded 'The Most Beautiful Book in the World’ at the Leipzig Book Fair. She received many awards, a.o the Gutenberg Prize and in 2014 the Dutch State Prize for the Arts, the Johannes Vermeer Prize for her ‘unparallelelled achievements in the files of graphic design’.

Boom, who is internationally renowned for her book designs, is responsible for the corporate identity of the gallery since its start and also for the design of most books published by the gallery. She has been invited as a guest curator to compose an exhibition. It will be the fifth exhibition in a row at Slewe Gallery put together by a guest curator. Earlier editions were by art historian Rudi Fuchs with Couplet 7 in 2011 (with Karel Appel, Domenico Bianchi and Georg Herold) and by the artistic director of the Dutch Opera, Pierre Audi, with Broken Gods in 2014 (with Thomas Houseago, Matthew Monahan and Jonathan Meese).

Karel Appel, Reset: 16 January – 5 March 2016

When you think of the artist Karel Appel (1921-2006) you see wild colourful, expressionistic brush strokes, accompanied by Jazz Music of Dizzy Gillespie, or primitive drawings by children and strong coloured baroque images. The most well known Dutch painter after World War II painted ‘from the expression’. However his painterly career has shown another side as well. Around 1975, after an impasse, he renewed his oeuvre by going back to the basics of painting it self. His way of working became more meditative and abstract. This period is not well known and not valued well by most people in the art world. A selection of eight paintings from this period 1978-1980 will now be on view at Slewe Gallery from January 16 through March 5.

The paintings, originated in the South of France, feature a new palette of broken tones. Whereas in the early years Appel mixed his colours directly with a palette knife on the canvas, now they are mixed beforehand and applied with broad brushes. Motifs as trees and field are absorbed in an all over pattern of ritmic applied straight brushstrokes. A waving pulsating surface arises as a colourful tapestry or an open field in nature.

Appel himself said about this period, he had enough of his baroque painting and was looking for a new starting point in order to come to a new imagery. These painting show the path to this new style. Using a flat brush, he starts working in a rather atypical, disciplined style of more controlled, short brushstrokes, which are rhythmically patterned across the canvas. In those years Appel saw a new catalogue on the work of Vincent Van Gogh, which turned out to be an important source of inspiration.

The exhibition is part of a new interest in the work of Karel Appel. At the same time an overview of his work will open at the Gemeentemuseum The Hague, which runs form January 16 to May 16. At the Staatliche Graphische Sammlung München of the Pinakotek der Moderne an overview of his drawings will open February 4, which had been earlier on view at the Centre Pompidou. Summer 2016 an exhibition with his works will be opened at the Philips Collection in Washington and in 2107 there will be a large overview at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville in Paris. The exhibition has been organized in collaboration with the karel Appel Foundation. For more information please contact the gallery.