Steven Aalders, Acts & Places: 24 May – 28 June 2014

Steven Aalders News Video Press Release (PDF)

Slewe Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of the exhibition Acts & Places by Dutch artist Steven Aalders. It opens Saturday May 24 and will be on view until June 28, 2014. Time and place is a returning theme in Aalders’ works. In his new series of paintings stillness and movement are visible compositional elements. The square is a central motif.

On view there will be two series of paintings. In one of the series, entitled Places, the image consists of an edged square. It is a static composition, in which either the central square or the edge is either colored or white. The image in the other series, entitled Acts, is divided in four squares and their edges. Here the composition is dynamic, in which the four colors are changing positions either as square or as edge in a rotating movement.

The six-colored spectrum, which Aalders has explored in depth in his former exhibition, one will find here back. It has been recollected in simplified and larger planes. There are also references to the seasons, the four elements and the times of the day. The titles of the paintings are quotations from the poem Four Quartets, T.S. Eliot’s epic 20th century meditation on time and being.

Alongside the exhibition there will be the launch of his new website www.stevenaalders.nl, designed by graphic designer Niels Schrader.

Aalders, known for his carefully hand painted geometric abstract oil paintings, evokes the history of modern abstraction, referring to the origins of Constructivism and Minimal Art. His work is an attempt to embody the essence, to create light and space through paint. Modernist serial principles such as repetition and sameness are both connected to older traditions in Western art and Eastern abstract art. The multi layered oil paintings demand a concentrated eye of the beholder.

Steven Aalders, born in 1959 in Middelbug (NL), lives and works in Amsterdam. He studied in London at Croydon College of Art and at Ateliers 63 in Haarlem (NL). In 2002 he had a solo exhibition, entitled Vertical Thoughts at the S.M.A.K. in Ghent in Belgium, and in 2010 his exhibition Cardinal Points opened at the Gemeentemuseum The Hague, on which occasion a catalog was published with an overview of 15 years work, with texts by Benno Tempel, Rudi Fuchs, Thomas Lange and Steven Aalders himself. His work has been internationally collected by both private and public collections such as the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, AKZO Nobel Art Foundation, Caldic Collection and Museum Kurhaus Kleve (DE).

Steven Aalders, Spectrum: 12 May – 16 June 2012

Steven Aalders News Video Press Release (PDF)Persbericht (PDF)

The laws of the colors are unutterably beautiful, just because they are not accidental.
— citation from letter 450 by Vincent van Gogh to his brother Theo, June 1884

Slewe Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of the exhibition Spectrum by Steven Aalders (*1959, NL) from May 12 to June 16, 2012. It will comprise new series of paintings with the spectrum as subject. One is a six-panelled work of which each panel is painted in one of the six colors of the spectrum and serves as a background for another spectral range of 12 colors. In relation to their background these colors change in perception according to the principles of interaction of colors. As a motto for this exhibition Aalders chose the above mentioned fragment from a letter of Van Gogh, in which Vincent evokes his belief in a scientific approach of painting.

Aalders, who has been reflecting on artists of the past and who has been investigating color schemes of various masters, old and modern, moves with these new series towards pure abstraction, by taking color itself as a subject. The exhibition comprises also a group of small new works with a new motif on which Aalders worked during his residency at the Josef Albers Foundation in the United States last Summer.

Aalders, known for his carefully hand painted geometric abstract oil paintings, evokes the history of modern abstraction, reverting to the origins of Constructivism and Minimal Art. His work is an attempt to embody the essence, to create light and space through paint. Modernist serial principles such as repetition and sameness are both connected to older traditions in Western art and Eastern abstract art. The multi layered oil paintings demand a concentrated eye of the beholder.

Steven Aalders, born in 1959 in Middelbug (NL), lives and works in Amsterdam. He studied in London at Croydon College of Art and at Ateliers 63 in Haarlem (NL). In 2002 he had a solo exhibition at the S.M.A.K. in Ghent in Belgium. A catalog with texts by Jan Hoet snd Pietje Tegenbosch was published at the same time. In 2010 his exhibition Cardinal Points at the Gemeentemuseum The Hague opened, on which occasion a catalog was published with an overview of 15 years work, with texts by Benno Tempel, Rudi Fuchs, Thomas Lange and Steven Aalders himself. Last year he had an exhibition at De Ketelfactory entitled For Philip Guston. His work has been internationally collected by both private and public collections such as the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, AKZO Nobel Art Foundation, Caldic Collection and Museum Kurhaus Kleve (DE).

Steven Aalders, Celestial Chart: 10 January – 14 February 2009

Steven Aalders News Press Release (PDF)

Slewe Gallery is pleased to announce Steven Aalders: Celestial Chart, the next exhibition at the gallery. It comprises some new series of paintings and will take place from January 10 through February 14, 2009

Steven Aalders, known for his carefully hand painted geometric abstract oil paintings proceeds on his earlier theme of orientation for his new exhibition. Whereas the direction of his former series was pointing more horizontal the new works are, as appears from the title of the exhibition, predominantly vertical focused. Constellations of a broken grid of horizontal and vertical coloured bars feature against a light or dark coloured background They move between a pattern and a sign, evoking a spatial working atmosphere. Like in his earlier work his use of colour reflects various colour concepts from the past.

Aalders evokes the history of modern abstraction, both seriously and playfully reverting to the origins of Constructivism and Minimal Art of the sixties and seventies. His work is an attempt to embody the essence, to create light and space through paint, and to remap the tradition of history of art as well. Modernist serial principles such as repetition and sameness are both connected to older traditions in Western art and Eastern abstract art. The carefully made multi layered oil paintings demand a concentrated eye of the beholder.