V&B (Alex Jacobs and Ellemieke Schoenmaker)
We find the way the art world operates, the system and the relationships it creates, very interesting. It’s a theme that keeps recurring in our work.
V&B is an artist duo consisting of Alex Jacobs (1973, Netherlands) and Ellemieke Schoenmaker (1968, Netherlands), who move between abstraction and figuration across painting, sculpture, and installation. Founded in 2007, their work brings together references from art history with elements drawn from media and popular culture, creating layered compositions that shift between abstraction and recognizable forms. While humor and self-irony often play a role, the work is driven by a strong curiosity about how images, materials, and meanings accumulate over time.
During the first fifteen years of their collaboration, V&B developed an eclectic body of work in which historical motifs were combined with elements borrowed from media and popular culture. In recent years, their focus has shifted toward material research, reusing residual plaster and fragments of earlier works to form new sculptural pieces. These are built up, compressed, and gradually sanded down in a slow, erosion-like process, revealing layered colors and traces of past works. Through this method, V&B create objects that carry both history and transformation, suggesting new ways of thinking about material, time, and the future.
