On Friday 16 April we open the second edition of the Van Ostade Biennale, this time with the theme landscapes. In this joint exhibition by GoMulan Gallery and Galerie Fleur & Wouter, four artists show their desire for extraordinary landscapes and nature. With this exhibition we celebrate the collaboration between our galleries, which share their gallery space at the Van Ostadestraat 43a.
The landscape is a popular topic in art history. In the nineteenth century, for example, the artists of the Romantic Movement abhorred industry, rationalism and materialism, and looked ideally to the past and a life closer to nature. In this exhibition artists Jaimy Gail de Gier, Marijke van Seters, Floor van het Nederend and Joran van Soest show a contemporary longing for the landscape in various art forms.
Achterland
Photographer Jaimy Gail de Gier (1992) is showing her new series Achterland (Hinterland). The project is a direct response to the first lockdown. The lack of entertainment and distraction has caused us to shift our focus en masse to the nature surrounding our homes and cities. Parks, but also the polder can enjoy our renewed appreciation. The series Achterland is therefore an ode to the function of landscape photography. Gail's series consists of photographs of the tranquil Dutch landscape. Think of a field of flowers or a farmhouse shrouded in shadow. The series was previously shown in a solo exhibition in De Balie. After graduating in 2017 from the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague, she exhibited the series 'Normaal Doen' at GoMulan Gallery. Her work has been published several times, including in Vice and Coeval Magazine.
Grand an intimate nature
The healing effect of nature makes the paintings and drawings of Marijke van Seters (1958) gain significance and grow even more powerful. Her works of art offer us solace, especially in a period when we are struggling. In her works, she focuses on close-ups of compelling details of nature, or looks at it from a bird's eye perspective with a high or, on the contrary, a very low horizon. On the one hand, she manages to immerse the viewer in nature by means of strong framing, on the other hand she confronts him with an almost breathtaking panoramic expanse. In this way Marijke touches us with the grandeur or, on the contrary, the intimacy of nature, as a source of inspiration and exhilaration. For this exhibition we published the book The grand and intimate world of nature, with an overview of Marijke's artworks.
Adventures
Floor van het Nederend (1987) is fascinated by comic strips, especially those by Belgian cartoonists such as Hergé and Franquin. In these comics, the characters experience adventures in remote parts of the world that seem unattainable. The same wonder can be found in the landscapes that Floor draws. His style is a mix of underground comics and punk flyers; raw, dark and mostly made with black ink. The images Floor creates are brutal and direct, but at the same time drawn with concentrated precision. Looking at his drawings, you drift into the dream of a world you will never visit and that is so unlike your own.
Conversations
The landscapes that Joran van Soest (1994) shows in this exhibition demonstrate his affinity with the Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich. Like the German painter, the figures, or the absence of figures in his works, draw you into the image, as if it is you looking out over the depicted landscape. In this way, Joran van Soest questions the relation of the viewer to the image and invites the viewer to a conversation. He also does this by screen-printing photographs of himself as a child on the bases of his collages. With these recognisable images, like those of zeppelins and parachutes, he sets out to investigates collective memory with the viewer. Joran van Soest graduated from the AKV St. Joost art academy in Den Bosch two years ago. Last year, his first own retrospective was on display at the Noordbrabants Museum.
