Jacco Olivier fuses painting and filmmaking by repeatedly reworking paintings in generous casual brush strokes and systematically photographing each development. The various stages are combined into projected animations. The resulting films are enigmatic and experiential – moving in and out of abstraction they reveal the traces and decisions made by the artist in the process of painting. While there is a clear and quite complex process involved in their creation, Olivier does not set a thematic agenda for the works, or for their relationship to one another. The films are instead imagined as windows onto converging, and often elegantly simple, moments of daily life – a bus journey, a swim in the ocean, or a walk through the woods. At this convergence of painting and cinema, however, lies an uneasy tension, a feeling that something is about to happen or has just happened that is unexpected and beyond our control.

Jacco Olivier is a graduate of the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten, Amsterdam. He has exhibited worldwide, notably at ZKM, Karlsruhe; Sammlung Goetz, Munich; Victoria Miro Gallery, London; Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York, NY; Dordrechts Museum, Dordrecht; MCA Denver, CO; The 56th Venice Biennial, Venice; Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem; New York City Center/New Museum, New York, NY, and GEM, The Hague. His art is held in many public collections, including Museum Voorlinden, Wassenaar; the Honart Museum, Tehran; the Zabludowicz Collection, London, and the Rubell Family Collection, Miami, FL. In 2019, he was awarded the Jeanne Oosting Prize for figurative painting in The Netherlands.

Jacco Olivier was born in 1972 in Goes, The Netherlands
He lives and works in Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Silvia B. (NL, 1963) is known for her sculptures of hybride figures which she presents in a wide range of settings. Stringendo — a musical term that indicates the retained increase of intensity — shows her latest extremely realistic sculptures of vulnerable adolescent dancers who are struggling with their bindings, strings and wooden parts to grow. The rats that flank the dancers sides, should seem completely inferior, but in the compositions of Silvia B. they have an angelic and pure appearance. The staging of the two complementary characters sums up the drawback of human civilization.

Galerie Ron Mandos presents Stringendo, a new series of sculptures by Silvia B. Silvia B. (NL, 1963) is known for her sculptures of hybrid figures; caught between age, gender and culture, between human, animal and doll. In addition to her iconic sculptures she makes drawings, photographs and also curated several projects. Her work is characterized by a constant battle between attraction and repulsion. A duality that comes from her vision of the world, how people behave according to so called codes of civilization and yet are still driven by their instinctive fears and desires.

Levi van Veluw was born in the city of Hoevelaken in 1985. He lives and works near Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Over the past 15 years, Van Veluw has produced a diverse and evolving oeuvre that is exhibited all around the world. He is known for installations, sculptures, drawings, and autobiographical films that draw from his childhood memories. From the depths of his memory, the artist unearths images that provoke universal emotions and question our human logic. Van Veluw plays with elements of order and chaos, posing to the viewer questions about our obsessive pursuit of control.

Van Veluw creates his works with extreme care and craftsmanship; his sculptures of clay and wood are made entirely by hand, giving them an authentic, coarse, and organic character. His intricately built-up charcoal drawings show great symmetry and harmony, whilst his remarkable use of light evokes a strong, meditative mood. The installations by Van Veluw offer intense and immersive experiences. In the past, he has built complete, though fictional cathedrals – amongst other dark and sensory spaces built of obscure forms and materials. Visitors that enter Van Veluw’s alternate realities become disassociated from their existing spatial interpretations. They experience a disruptive environment where both order and chaos live one amongst the other.

The work of Van Veluw has been exhibited internationally in leading museums and institutions worldwide, such as the Museum of Arts and Design, New York; the Bass Museum of Art, Miami; Ars Electronica, Linz; Centro Nacional de las Artes, Mexico City; Design Museum, London; Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, and Marres House for Contemporary Culture, Maastricht, amongst others. His work is included in both public and private collections, such as the Borusan Collection, Istanbul; Museum Voorlinden, Wassenaar; Museum MORE, Gorssel; the KPMG Art Collection, Amstelveen; the Ekard Collection, Wassenaar; the Lakeside Collection, Rotterdam, and Cobra to Contemporary/The Brown Family Collection.

Additionally, Van Veluw has worked on commissions for private clients. Within these commissions he has undertaken many collaborations. In 2012, Van Veluw worked alongside curator Marc Coetzee on the film “Family”, produced as part of the “Films4peace” project. In 2014, working alongside Hermès, Van Veluw created a life-sized site-specific installation for one of their main windows in Shanghai. Van Veluw has also participated in international film festivals, including Addis Foto Fest, Addis Ababa; Afrika Film festival, Leuven; Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival, Port of Spain, and West Midlands Human Rights Film Festival, Birmingham.

Dutch artist Christiaan Zwanikken creates kinetic works of remarkable ingenuity from found animal skulls and bones. He transforms these parts into moving mechanical sculptures and installations. Their composite natural and mechanical make-up gives these figures their own unique character. He breeds these new species in a 400-year-old monastery located in a remote village in Portugal. He also works in Amsterdam and New York.

Zwanikken’s works have been widely exhibited nationally and internationally and can be found in the collection of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Gasunie collection, Netherlands Media Art Institute and numerous other public and private collections. Zwanikken’s installations are like interactive Wunderkammers, configurations of hybrid, techno-animalistic figures, that come to ‘life’, responding to the viewer and to each other.

Zwanikken plays nature – against artificial – against viewer removing any authoritative role: his hierarchy is governed by a different order. Due to the unpredictability of the computer-aided elements, it is not certain who responds to whom, and who is looking or being looked at. By making technology seem to be ‘out of control’, Zwanikken ironizes the hype around interaction in media art and the illusion of smooth-running communications. As a rule his installations demonstrate human or animal conduct and thus serve as a handle for investigating and critiquing nature and behavior. His fusion of organic and inorganic materials mashed with interactive technology demonstrates the evolution and de-evolution of sculpture in the twenty-first century.

www.christiaanzwanikken.com