RONMANDOS gallery is proud to be able to make a beautiful presentation with work by the successful Belgian artist Hans Op de Beeck, the highly talented Annemiek de Beer, the prodigious young Austrian artist Bertram Hasenauer and the beautifully crafted, contemplative work of Maurice van Tellingen
Hans Op de Beeck’s ‘The Building’ is an animation film in which the artist sends the viewer on a virtual, nocturnal walking tour of a hospital complex. This hospital has the same mediocre, half-hearted, over-the-top architectural features as the hospitals, shopping malls, health clubs or airports that have shot up like mushrooms all over the Western World. These buildings are designed to accommodate visitors by the tens of thousands at the very least, and therefore radiate a mood of alienation and interchangeability. Strikingly enough it is precisely these huge, new, impersonal hospital complexes that usually form the background for the most personal and essential moments in life: in a hospital one is born, suffers, comforts, heals and dies.
Annemiek de Beer’s main concern was to capture light in her paintings and the changing structures inherent within it. A logical follow-on from these interests was a more abstract mode of thought that can be witnessed in both the appearance of her work as well as her use of materials. Also in relation to colour and texture, Annemiek de Beer follows a unique path, utilising withdrawn, cement schemes that yet retain a fresh and silky character. There slowly formed within her oeuvre an interest in the traditions of Japanese painting, with its linear and structural clarity and above all its elegant simplicity. Presently she paints uncomplicated subjects from her direct surroundings.
Interiors are one of the core themes of the work of Maurice van Tellingen. These interiors usually manifest themselves in the form of a small box. Van Tellingen likes to refer to these items as spatial paintings. The work evokes the passing of time, or perhaps ´time stood still´, something alternative to our society obsessed with spectacle and sensation. News items, images and advertisement bombard our everyday interior space. Peace and quiet hardly seem possible in this situation. However Van Tellingen attempts to give us back this time with his models; a ticking clock literally refers to this. By presenting us with it, we receive the time to perceive the everyday and uneventful as something worthwhile
Bertram Hasenauer is considered a figurative artist. He is dedicated to the depiction of the human figure and employs an artistic language, which assures recollection and identification. Despite their surreal, or unreal presence, they resemble a human-like appearance than just mere images. Bertram Hasenauer’s human figures are both present and absent. They have retreated into themselves, concentrated on their most inward self, turned sideways, covered or cocooned as in pupation – not without having always carried the One and the Other, the new and the old, male and female, puppet and the human being within.
At the first edition of Project(OR) at Art Rotterdam, Artists Anonymous will present a new site-specific installation. Project(OR) – platform for contemporary art platforms will be located at the former post office, Coolsingel 42, Rotterdam, from Wednesday the 6th to Sunday the 10th of February, open daily from 13:00 – 19:00. www.projectorrotterdam.nl
