Beyond These Walls 2

In The labyrinth that you are (2026), two lovers dance together. The intimacy of the moment is held in their soft gazes as they meet. The title is borrowed from a poem by Lebanese writer and artist Etel Adnan, and seems to refer to the search for each other’s inner world. But the labyrinth also stands for the human search for where we belong – for our place in the greater whole. The painting is a collaborative work by Raafat Ballan (1990, Syria) and Sophie Steengracht (1991, Netherlands), who have shared their lives since 2019.

In shared reading sessions of Adnan’s magical realist poetry, Ballan and Steengracht found a common starting point. In her work, Adnan makes no distinction between a second and eternity, nature and human, dream and myth. They recognize this vision in each other’s work. Ballan paints people in a way that transcends time and culture; Steengracht explores the cycles of growth and decay in her work. What connects them is a perspective beyond the here and now – a search for the universal in the personal.

Raafat Ballan and Sophie Steengracht both live and work in Utrecht (NL). Ballan studied at Damascus University Faculty of Fine Arts (SY) and Hogeschool voor de Kunsten Utrecht (NL). His work has been exhibited at Centraal Museum Utrecht; Noordbrabants Museum en Museum Arnhem (NL). Steengracht studied at Koninklijke Academie van Beeldende Kunst, Den Haag (NL) and has been exhibited at the Singer Laren; Museum Arnhem and the Stedelijk Museum Schiedam (NL). 

New Dutch Views #51, The Netherlands (2021) of Marwan Bassiouni (1985, Switzerland) places us on a soft blue carpet. The entire room is bathed in blue light. Repetitive arabesque tiles emphasize the impressive height of the room, and a floral stained-glass window connects the inside with the outside. The cohesion is only broken by the bright white emergency exit sign, beyond which a typically Dutch landscape awaits. In the span of a year, Bassiouni visited more than seventy of the over four hundred mosques in the Netherlands. In the photos he took there, he captures the interior merging with the Dutch landscape visible from the mosque.

Bassiouni’s razor-sharp photos question the way Islam is represented in the West and show a society in which different cultures coexist alongside and with each other. New Dutch Views is a symbolic portrait of Bassiouni’s dual cultural background and emphasizes the fact that a new Western identity is emerging.

Marwan Bassiouni studied photography at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague and at the Photography School of Vevey in Switzerland. His work has been exhibited at the Fotomuseum, The Hague (NL); Nederlands Fotomuseum, Rotterdam (NL); Kunsthaus Zürich, Winterthur (CH); The International Center of Photography, New York (US); Fotostiftung Schweiz (CH); Foam, Amsterdam (NL); Kunstmuseum Den Haag (NL); The Shanghai Center of Photography (CN); The Benaki Museum, Athens (GR) and Cultuurhuis De Warande, Turnhout (BE).

A hotel is a place you arrive at and leave once all your traces have been erased. With her ongoing photographic series Tre Stelle (2025), Florence di Benedetto (1975, Italy) emphasizes precisely the invisible presence of the hotel guest. The photographed spaces and objects serve as silent witnesses to human presence. Memories settle in them like dust in a room. Each room stores something of the lives that brush past one another there without ever meeting.

The work of fashion and still life photographer di Benedetto is rooted in a deeply personal approach, steeped in symbolism. Each work tells a story in which di Benedetto’s own memories and traditions are subtly interwoven. In a style that is seemingly light-hearted – inspired by the innate ability to weather life’s small and large storms – she seeks images that forge deep empathic connections.

Florence di Benedetto lives and works in Milan (IT). She graduated from the Italian Institute of Photography in Milan (IT). Her work has been exhibited at Spazio Arte Contemporanea, Livorno; Palazzo Boglietti, Biella; Grand Ducal Palace of Foiano, Arezzo; Piccolo Teatro, Milan (IT) and Paris Photo (FR). In 2023, she was nominated for the Meijburg Art Commission.

An ancient olive tree has been blackened by a large fire. Nothing remains of its crown and imposing trunk but a charred, grayish carcass. Olive trees are hollow and can burn from the inside out for days. Despite the damage inflicted on this tree by human activity, it rises like a phoenix from the ashes. From its roots, three young trees have grown, intertwined with the blackened trunk like children around their mother. The photograph by Florence di Benedetto (1975, Italy) is part of the series La Natura Umana, a photographic exploration of the relationship between humans and nature.

In La Natura Umana, fashion and still life photographer di Benedetto meticulously enhances her photographs with gold leaf. This process is inspired by the Japanese art of kintsugi, in which broken objects are repaired by bonding the fractures with lacquer mixed with gold, silver, or platinum. Kintsugi embraces the idea of an object’s visible history, emphasizing and celebrating imperfections.

Florence di Benedetto lives and works in Milan (IT) and graduated from the Italian Institute of Photography. Her work has been exhibited at Spazio Arte Contemporanea, Livorno; Palazzo Boglietti, Biella; the Grand Ducal Palace of Foiano, Arezzo and Piccolo Teatro, Milan (IT). In 2023, she was nominated for the Meijburg Art Commission.

In the paintings of Pim Blokker (1972, Netherlands), paint shoots across the canvas like swirling leaves in a summer storm. Quick and precise, almost weightless. Against a backdrop of saturated colors, he depicts subjects so ordinary that they verge on the uncanny. Although the brush brings light and air to every scene, Blokker's paintings possess an unmistakably melancholic undertone.

Blokker approaches the canvas like a board game. In his paintings, the perspective constantly shifts or stretches, and formal aspects collide and merge with the physical act of painting itself. Blokker doesn't aim to create an illusion but uses personal associations to explore new representations of reality. The slapstick humor inherent in his work leaves room for light and darkness, enabling him to explore somber issues in a playful way.

Pim Blokker lives and works in Amsterdam (NL). He studied at the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, and was a resident at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten, Amsterdam (NL). His work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions at venues including the Foire International Contemporary Art Fair, Paris (FR); W139, Amsterdam (NL); Villa de Bank, Enschede (NL); Valois, Paris (FR); American Academy Rome (IT) and Edel Assanti in London (UK).

In the paintings of Pim Blokker (1972, Netherlands), paint shoots across the canvas like swirling leaves in a summer storm. Quick and precise, almost weightless. Against a backdrop of saturated colors, he depicts subjects so ordinary that they verge on the uncanny. Although the brush brings light and air to every scene, Blokker's paintings possess an unmistakably melancholic undertone.

Blokker approaches the canvas like a board game. In his paintings, the perspective constantly shifts or stretches, and formal aspects collide and merge with the physical act of painting itself. Blokker doesn't aim to create an illusion but uses personal associations to explore new representations of reality. The slapstick humor inherent in his work leaves room for light and darkness, enabling him to explore somber issues in a playful way.

Pim Blokker lives and works in Amsterdam (NL). He studied at the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, and was a resident at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten, Amsterdam (NL). His work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions at venues including the Foire International Contemporary Art Fair, Paris (FR); W139, Amsterdam (NL); Villa de Bank, Enschede (NL); Valois, Paris (FR); American Academy Rome (IT) and Edel Assanti in London (UK).

In the paintings of Pim Blokker (1972, Netherlands), paint shoots across the canvas like swirling leaves in a summer storm. Quick and precise, almost weightless. Against a backdrop of saturated colors, he depicts subjects so ordinary that they verge on the uncanny. Although the brush brings light and air to every scene, Blokker's paintings possess an unmistakably melancholic undertone.

Blokker approaches the canvas like a board game. In his paintings, the perspective constantly shifts or stretches, and formal aspects collide and merge with the physical act of painting itself. Blokker doesn't aim to create an illusion but uses personal associations to explore new representations of reality. The slapstick humor inherent in his work leaves room for light and darkness, enabling him to explore somber issues in a playful way.

Pim Blokker lives and works in Amsterdam (NL). He studied at the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, and was a resident at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten, Amsterdam (NL). His work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions at venues including the Foire International Contemporary Art Fair, Paris (FR); W139, Amsterdam (NL); Villa de Bank, Enschede (NL); Valois, Paris (FR); American Academy Rome (IT) and Edel Assanti in London (UK).

In the paintings of Udona Boerema (1982, Netherlands), landscapes slowly emerge and fade again – palm trees in a light haze, a branch reflected in dark water. Boerema works on unprimed coarse linen, which partially absorbs the paint. By treating the linen with a transparent binder and heavily diluted acrylic paint, she determines how much of the image becomes visible. In this delicate process, support, paint and gesture merge. This creates layers of transparency in which figuration and abstraction flow into one another.

Transience and transformation are central to Boerema's work. What you see can always be something else: paint dissolving into a cloud, a form returning to what it is – pigment on canvas. Boerema calls this transfiguration: the moment when material turns into meaning. The painting is already there, she says, it just needs to be slowly discovered. What rises from the layers is not a fixed image, but a suggestion the viewer fills in themselves.

Udona Boerema lives and works in Borne and Hengelo (NL). She studied at AKI/ArtEZ in Enschede and Academie Minerva in Groningen (NL). Her work has been exhibited in galleries and museums, including Rijksmuseum Twenthe, Enschede (NL) and Gray Contemporary, Houston (US).

In the paintings of Udona Boerema (1982, Netherlands), landscapes slowly emerge and fade again – palm trees in a light haze, a branch reflected in dark water. Boerema works on unprimed coarse linen, which partially absorbs the paint. By treating the linen with a transparent binder and heavily diluted acrylic paint, she determines how much of the image becomes visible. In this delicate process, support, paint and gesture merge. This creates layers of transparency in which figuration and abstraction flow into one another.

Transience and transformation are central to Boerema's work. What you see can always be something else: paint dissolving into a cloud, a form returning to what it is – pigment on canvas. Boerema calls this transfiguration: the moment when material turns into meaning. The painting is already there, she says, it just needs to be slowly discovered. What rises from the layers is not a fixed image, but a suggestion the viewer fills in themselves.

Udona Boerema lives and works in Borne and Hengelo (NL). She studied at AKI/ArtEZ in Enschede and Academie Minerva in Groningen (NL). Her work has been exhibited in galleries and museums, including Rijksmuseum Twenthe, Enschede (NL) and Gray Contemporary, Houston (US).

Bo Bosk (1992, Netherlands) finds his subjects close to home. The everyday scenes he zooms in on are lifted, in his hands, into cinematic snapshots. In his most recent work, he captures the relationship with his girlfriend, and the paintings form a testament to their shared experiences. Geneva (2025) and Geneva 6 (2025) are balancing acts in capturing the texture and materiality of the clothes his beloved wears and the grass field in which her feet seem to have disappeared. Themes such as intimacy, coming of age and personal growth run like a thread through the series.

In his work, Bosk attempts to unravel the complex nature of our existence and to connect us with more universal aspects of being human. With his intimate self-portraits, portraits of friends and scenes from daily life, he creates cinematic scenes on canvas in which unfinished stories are told that the viewer can complete. The work invites reflection on our own experiences, emotions and shared human reality, and manages to bridge cultural differences.

Bo Bosk lives and works in Amsterdam (NL). Bosk is self-taught and from 2023 to 2025 participated as a resident at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten, Amsterdam. His work has been exhibited at institutions such as CBK Zuidoost and OSCAM, Amsterdam; Kunsthal Kade, Amersfoort; and Museum MORE, Gorssel (NL). In 2022, he received a nomination for the Royal Prize for Modern Painting.

Bo Bosk (1992, Netherlands) finds his subjects close to home. The everyday scenes he zooms in on are lifted, in his hands, into cinematic snapshots. In his most recent work, he captures the relationship with his girlfriend, and the paintings form a testament to their shared experiences. Geneva (2025) and Geneva 6 (2025) are balancing acts in capturing the texture and materiality of the clothes his beloved wears and the grass field in which her feet seem to have disappeared. Themes such as intimacy, coming of age and personal growth run like a thread through the series.

In his work, Bosk attempts to unravel the complex nature of our existence and to connect us with more universal aspects of being human. With his intimate self-portraits, portraits of friends and scenes from daily life, he creates cinematic scenes on canvas in which unfinished stories are told that the viewer can complete. The work invites reflection on our own experiences, emotions and shared human reality, and manages to bridge cultural differences.

Bo Bosk lives and works in Amsterdam (NL). Bosk is self-taught and from 2023 to 2025 participated as a resident at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten, Amsterdam. His work has been exhibited at institutions such as CBK Zuidoost and OSCAM, Amsterdam; Kunsthal Kade, Amersfoort; and Museum MORE, Gorssel (NL). In 2022, he received a nomination for the Royal Prize for Modern Painting.

Daylight falls in through large sheets of porous paper. The colors applied to the scooped paper pulp gain intensity from the light making its way inside. Lex ter Braak (1950, Netherlands) created the works in response to his nature walks. Walking, according to Ter Braak, is a form of absorption in the world beyond the image and language we have formed to organize the world around us. What remains when we indulge in a walk is nature as experience.

Lex ter Braak brings together his work under the umbrella title The Alphabet of Lost Order. The title refers to the world, nature and landscape that we have lost through our own actions and to the language that drove us out of the world as we overpowered it. Making that loss visible moves him in his work.

Lex ter Braak studied Dutch and comparative literature and then attended the Gerrit Rietveld Academy, Amsterdam. In addition to being an artist, Ter Braak is known as an organizer, curator and former director of De Vleeshal, Middelburg (NL); Fonds BKVB (NL) and the Jan van Eyck Academy, Maastricht (NL). He was also a lecturer at the Rietveld Academy and the Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam (NL). Since 2015, he has focused primarily on his life as an artist and writer.

Daylight falls in through large sheets of porous paper. The colors applied to the scooped paper pulp gain intensity from the light making its way inside. Lex ter Braak (1950, Netherlands) created the works in response to his nature walks. Walking, according to Ter Braak, is a form of absorption in the world beyond the image and language we have formed to organize the world around us. What remains when we indulge in a walk is nature as experience.

Lex ter Braak brings together his work under the umbrella title The Alphabet of Lost Order. The title refers to the world, nature and landscape that we have lost through our own actions and to the language that drove us out of the world as we overpowered it. Making that loss visible moves him in his work.

Lex ter Braak studied Dutch and comparative literature and then attended the Gerrit Rietveld Academy, Amsterdam. In addition to being an artist, Ter Braak is known as an organizer, curator and former director of De Vleeshal, Middelburg (NL); Fonds BKVB (NL) and the Jan van Eyck Academy, Maastricht (NL). He was also a lecturer at the Rietveld Academy and the Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam (NL). Since 2015, he has focused primarily on his life as an artist and writer.

The main theme in the oeuvre of Hans Broek (1965, Netherlands) is the representation of the landscape. The painter draws inspiration from photos he takes during his worldwide peregrinations, often in locations where history has left its mark. His first landscapes from the early nineties, such as Kronstadt (1993), are expressionist canvases with generous impasto and were inspired by travel memories. Strength combined with a certain sprezzatura.

Characteristic of Broek’s paintings are not only the sober figurative style and technical mastery but also the light, enigmatic presence of places and objects that are nonetheless depicted clearly and concretely. In this, Broek can be seen as a kindred spirit of Edward Hopper, whose depictions of deserted gas stations or lonely lighthouses convey a similar sense of eerie stillness.

Hans Broek lives and works in Muiden (NL). He studied at the Utrecht School of the Arts, was a resident at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten in Amsterdam (1991–1993), and has lived alternately in Los Angeles, New York, and Senegal. His work has been exhibited at venues such as De Pont, Tilburg (NL); Gasunie, Groningen (NL); Hermitage, Amsterdam (NL); and the Victoria Miro Gallery in London (UK). Broek’s paintings are part of collections at institutions such as the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (NL); De Pont, Tilburg (NL) and the Dordrechts Museum (NL).

The works of Popel Coumou (1978, Netherlands) use minimal means to suggest a space. A window, a staircase or a doorway entice the viewer to think about what lies behind it. Using only paper and light, Coumou creates a feeling that seems to hover between space and time. The layers that make up this collage are images of skies. They cause natural color gradients and create an illusion of depth, while the texture in the paper remains clearly visible.

Coumou’s oeuvre consists of photographs, handmade collages, light works and miniatures. Her photo-based works question our perception of space. They explore the way our brain works; how little information is needed to fill in the gaps and create our own reality. Simple architectural compositions are transformed by Coumou into intriguing, dreamlike images that force us as viewer to question what we see.

Popel Coumou lives and works in Amsterdam (NL). She graduated from the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in 2004. Her work is exhibited worldwide and is included in the collections of Kunstmuseum Den Haag (NL); Foam and Huis Marseille, Amsterdam (NL) and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, The Hague (NL), among others. Her work has been awarded several prizes, including Foam Talent, the Mercure Culture Prize and the Hyères Photography Competition.

Josquin van Elburg (2002, Netherlands) developed a work especially for Beyond These Walls in which three disciplines come together: painting, mural and collage. In the mural we see Van Elburg’s view of the creation of the world, in which the presence of a woman is central. The collages depict contemporary representations of women, with the emphasis on their individuality. The painting is already in itself a pastiche. The woman, whose gaze drifts somewhere between shyness and melancholy, symbolizes youth.

Van Elburg’s work builds a bridge between the past and the present. He combines elements from classical Greek art, the Renaissance and the modernist tradition of Cézanne and Matisse with cinematic references such as Fellini and Antonioni. The resulting fusion creates a rich new visual language that explores the harmony and dissonance of the human experience.

Josquin van Elburg graduated from the ArtEZ Institute of the Arts in Arnhem in 2024, where he embraced a rigorous practice inspired by Rodin’s advice to Rilke: ‘Work, always work.’ Van Elburg’s artistic journey to ArtEZ broadened his horizons to sculpture and costume making, but his deep affinity with painting remained central. In the same year, he was selected for the annual Best of Graduates exhibition at Galerie Ron Mandos. His work has since been purchased by private collectors.

The title of this work, “All Purpose Smile”, by Esiri Erheriene-Essi (1982, United Kingdom) is as enigmatic as the facial expressions of the figures portrayed in it. A photograph of a Nigerian-British family taken in East London in the 70s formed the basis for All Purpose Smile (2017). By adding the photograph of her own mother and uncles who migrated from Nigeria to London in the 70s to newspaper clippings from the same period, Erheriene-Essi weaves a complex web of historical narratives and hidden memories.

Erheriene-Essi is interested in images, objects and documents that allow her to examine individual and shared memories. Photographs featuring people who migrated to the West from Africa, Haiti and the Caribbean in the 60s, 70s and 80s in search of a better life, serve as source material for her paintings.

Esiri Erheriene-Essi graduated from the University of East London (UK) and was a resident at De Ateliers in Amsterdam (NL). Her work has been exhibited worldwide and held in various public collections, including Fries Museum, Leeuwarden; Stedelijk Museum Schiedam; Museum MORE, Gorssel; Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (NL); Bozar, Brussels (BE) and Kunstmuseum Basel (CH). She was awarded the 2009 Royal Award for Modern Painting and nominated for the Prix de Rome in 2019.

Highways once symbolized the road to progress. Today, they are occupied by people who rarely know exactly where they are going but are carried along by the current without stopping. In the cinematic photo series Proceed To The Route, Tania Franco Klein (1990, Mexico) presents her alter ego as a traveler: always on the move, yet never truly at home. The title of the series is taken from the iconic phrase with which Google Maps begins every route, appearing as a commanding reminder after a wrong turn.

Like a Hollywood film star, Franco Klein appears in desolate, expansive landscapes, along highways and airports, in swimming pools and motel room interiors. Her staged, cinematic tableaux capture the psychological undercurrent of life in the digital age, blurring the boundaries between reality and fiction. Through immersive installations, she explores the stress and loneliness that are inextricably linked to our contemporary society.

Tania Franco Klein lives and works in Mexico City (MX). She studied Architecture in Mexico City (MX) and Photography at the University of London (UK). Her work has been featured in publications such as The British Journal of Photography, The Guardian, The Paris Review, Der Greif, and Vogue Italia. Her photographs have been widely exhibited across Europe, the United States, and Mexico, and she has received numerous awards for her work.

In this majestic work, Joris Geurts (1958, Netherlands) shows a sun rising above an imaginary horizon, among spinning circular orbits. Although Geurts’ paintings often have no title, they evoke associations with cosmic landscapes, starry night skies and seascapes. Now that we are having to deal more frequently with extreme weather conditions, it is becoming ever clearer how much we ought to cherish the sun as giver of life.

In his paintings and drawings, Geurts manages – using minimal visual elements – to balance the flat surface and the illusion of spatial depth. He approaches this in a graphic way, layer over layer, creating a strange balance between geometric forms, floating figures and depth. The result is a harmonious interplay of color, light and texture – a poetic homage to the beauty of nature.

Joris Geurts lives and works in Amsterdam (NL). He graduated from the Akademie voor Beeldende Kunsten Sint-Joost, Breda and the AKI ArtEZ Enschede (NL). His work has been exhibited at diverse locations across the Netherlands, including the Noordbrabants Museum, Den Bosch, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam and the Rijksmuseum Twente, Enschede (NL).

Interior No. 188 (2003) invites you to take a seat. In the orange-pink living room, everything comes together through the line of a thick white brush that traces all the outer edges like a child’s drawing. Anton Henning (1964, Germany) is known for his space-filling installations of interiors in which hand-painted furniture, murals and paintings become a world unto themselves. The walls of this room are adorned by a portrait of nineteenth-century painter Courbet and The Dance (1909) by Matisse.

Henning creates paintings, drawings, installations, photographs, collages and objects. His oeuvre reveals a world on its own; an eclectic universe in which diverse techniques, movements and disciplines intertwine. He draws inspiration from photography, film, theater, pop culture, art history and architecture. A common motif in Henning’s work is the Hennling, a graceful line that can appear in the form of an object, decoration or as jewelry.

Anton Henning lives and works in Berlin and Manker (DE). He is a self-taught artist. Henning’s work is included in collections such as the Kunstmuseum Den Haag (NL); De Pont in Tilburg (NL); National Museum of Art in Osaka (JP); LACMA in Los Angeles (US); Museum für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt am Main (DE); and the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles (US).

Panchromatic (small proof) (2001) by John Hilliard (1945, United Kingdom) forces us into the corner of a small room. In the grainy photographic print, an electrical outlet and an air vent can just be detected. The outer edge of saturated colors transforms the dark grey room into an abstract composition. Panchromatic literally means ‘all colors’ and refers to a sensor that combines the visible spectrum with non-visible wavelengths, such as ultraviolet or infrared.

John Hilliard began his career as a sculptor, but soon switched to photography. In his carefully constructed scenes, the photographic process itself is made the subject. He combines close-ups, mirroring, multiple lighting or change of focus, all in a single image. His themes relate to film and society, and a sense of fear and violence are covert but strong. Hilliard forces the viewer into the role of a detective, who must unravel the secret lurking in the background.

John Hilliard studied at Saint Martin’s School of Art, London (UK). His work has been widely exhibited at venues including Tate Modern, London (UK); Seoul Museum of Art (KR); Centre George Pompidou, Paris (FR) and The Henry Moore Institute, Leeds (UK). The work is part of the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York (US) and the Victoria & Albert Museum, London (UK).

Snæfell, a remote mountain in Iceland, is a magical place. Owing to the kaleidoscopic skies above the summit and the constantly changing colors of the surrounding landscape, the mountain is a popular attraction. Skies over Snæfell, a light installation by Allard van Hoorn (1968, Netherlands) visualizes these changing skies. A computer that continuously searches the internet for images of Snæfell controls the installation of 1536 rainbow-colored LED lights in changing tints. The internet images are indexed and the skies and mountain are separated from each other with special software. This mysterious work by Van Hoorn shows the abstract reality of the skies above Snæfell via internet. Van Hoorn is a sound, installation and performance artist. His works can be regarded as choreographies for the urban environment, which explore our relationship to (public) space and nature.

Skies over Snæfell came into being as a collaboration between Allard van Hoorn, the AkzoNobel Art Foundation, de Appel, and the Mondriaan Fund.

Allard Van Hoorn was artist in residence at ISCP in Brooklyn, New York. His work has been exhibited at home and abroad, including at Gasworks, London, the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich, Tate St. Ives, Cornwall and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.

The carpet Pink Happy Sausages (2009) by Hans Hovy (1953, Netherlands) features a playful pattern of oversized sausages on strings, seemingly going in all directions, which enhances the view from above. With its soft and colorful strength, this carpet adds an extra dimension to the salon decor of this room.

Hovy creates installations, sculptures, drawings, as well as carpets and jewelry. He effortlessly switches between different disciplines, choosing the medium that best suits his question or exploration. Hovy’s work often lies at the intersection of contrasts; playful and strict at the same time, and hard and heavy materials that appear soft and light.

Hans Hovy graduated from the Academy for Fine Art Education, Amsterdam, and the Ateliers ‘63, Haarlem (NL). His work has been exhibited at, among others, Kunstmuseum Den Haag (NL); Museum Jan Cunen, Oss (NL); Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam (NL); Stedelijk Museum Schiedam (NL); Rijksmuseum Twente (NL) and Saatchi Gallery, London (UK).

Esther Jiskoot (1963, Netherlands) creates sculptures in which she combines various materials with glass beads. She strings the beads into long threads, which she then crochets or knits and weaves with materials such as ceramics, cast aluminum, or glass. The organic nature of the sculptures evokes human or animal anatomy, exposing a vulnerable and imperfect physicality. The titles are an inseparable part of Jiskoot’s work. ‘They are part of its sensory aspect,’ she says herself, and are essential for understanding the work.

The three different works by Jiskoot in this exhibition not only demonstrate her ability to imbue diverse materials and formats with an equally powerful poetic expression, but they also, in an unfathomable way, stimulate the imagination of the viewer.

Esther Jiskoot lives and works in Amsterdam. She graduated from the Gerrit Rietveld Academy and the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten in Amsterdam. Her work has been exhibited at various locations, including the National Glass Museum, Leerdam (NL); Kunstenlab, Deventer (NL); Noordbrabants Museum, Den Bosch (NL); W139, Amsterdam (NL); Stedelijk Museum Schiedam (NL) and Bornholm Art Museum (DK).

Suntrap VIII by Esther Jiskoot (1963, the Netherlands) is part of a larger series of sculptures with which she seeks to capture the luminescent beauty of the sun’s rays. Rendered in a blaze of yellow, Suntrap VIII bears witness to Jiskoot’s practice of integrating divergent materials with glass beads, which she strings on long threads before crocheting or knitting them into various forms. Titles are integral to Jiskoot’s work. They “form part of the sensory aspect thereof” she says, and also the key to understanding them. This work, resembling an old fashioned hunter’s trap, the ribs of which are formed by (or maybe infused with) rays of sunlight, embodies both the promise and impossibility of harnessing the power of one of nature’s most majestic natural resources: the sun.

The three different works by Jiskoot in this exhibition not only demonstrate her ability to imbue diverse materials and formats with an equally powerful poetic expression, but they also, in an unfathomable way, stimulate the imagination of the viewer.

Esther Jiskoot lives and works in Amsterdam. She graduated from the Gerrit Rietveld Academy and the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten in Amsterdam. Her work has been exhibited at various locations, including the National Glass Museum, Leerdam (NL); Kunstenlab, Deventer (NL); Noordbrabants Museum, Den Bosch (NL); W139, Amsterdam (NL); Stedelijk Museum Schiedam (NL) and Bornholm Art Museum (DK).

Esther Jiskoot (1963, Netherlands) creates sculptures in which she combines various materials with glass beads. She strings the beads into long threads, which she then crochets or knits and weaves with materials such as ceramics, cast aluminum, or glass. The organic nature of the sculptures evokes human or animal anatomy, exposing a vulnerable and imperfect physicality. The titles are an inseparable part of Jiskoot’s work. ‘They are part of its sensory aspect,’ she says herself, and are essential for understanding the work.

The three different works by Jiskoot in this exhibition not only demonstrate her ability to imbue diverse materials and formats with an equally powerful poetic expression, but they also, in an unfathomable way, stimulate the imagination of the viewer.

Esther Jiskoot lives and works in Amsterdam. She graduated from the Gerrit Rietveld Academy and the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten in Amsterdam. Her work has been exhibited at various locations, including the National Glass Museum, Leerdam (NL); Kunstenlab, Deventer (NL); Noordbrabants Museum, Den Bosch (NL); W139, Amsterdam (NL); Stedelijk Museum Schiedam (NL) and Bornholm Art Museum (DK).

Krijn de Koning (1963, Netherlands) is concerned with our experience of architectural space. De Koning usually makes site-specific works in museums, galleries and public spaces, that investigate the characteristics of a particular space. In addition De Koning makes sculptures, such as Box (2019), a brightly colored architectonic structure that seems to fit together like a Rubik’s cube.

‘My work is always about looking, about how to draw attention to things. I work from the conviction that a space has both a physical and a mental impact,’ says De Koning. His oeuvre is distinguished by its strong visual language of rectangular architectural forms and colored surfaces. His work is best described as sculptural, but possesses the qualities of both painting and architecture.

Krijn de Koning lives and works in Amsterdam. He was a resident at De Ateliers and graduated from the Rietveld Academie (NL) and the Institut Des Hautes Etudes En Art Plastique (FR). His work has been exhibited in various places including De Nieuwe Kerk, Amsterdam (NL); Vleeshal, Middelburg (NL); Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (NL); Museum Booijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam (NL); Stedelijk Museum, Schiedam (NL); Centraal Museum, Utrecht (NL), and FRAC Lorraine, Metz (FR). In 2007, he received the Sikkens Prize.

Krijn de Koning (1963, Netherlands) is well known for his temporary installations in museums, galleries and public spaces, in which the experience of the space is central. In addition, De Koning also makes smaller sculptures, such as the works from his series Tumbling Works. These are many-colored architectural arrangements that you can turn over onto any side.

Krijn de Koning is concerned with the question of how we experience architectural space. ‘My work is always about looking, about how you draw attention to things. I work from the position that a space has a physical as well as a mental impact,’ says De Koning. His site-specific interventions are recognizable by their strong visual language of rectangular architectural forms and colored surfaces. His work can best be described as sculptural, but possesses the qualities of both painting and architecture.

Krijn de Koning lives and works in Amsterdam. He was a resident at De Ateliers and graduated from the Rietveld Academie (NL) and the Institut Des Hautes Etudes En Art Plastique (FR). His work has been exhibited in various places including De Nieuwe Kerk, Amsterdam (NL); De Vleeshal, Middelburg (NL); Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (NL); Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam (NL); Stedelijk Museum Schiedam (NL); Centraal Museum, Utrecht (NL), and FRAC Lorraine, Metz (FR). In 2007, he received the Sikkens Prize.

Work, (Office Blocks) (2012) by Krijn de Koning (1963, Netherlands) consists of spatial elements in bright colors that seem to open a space and simultaneously limit it. Although the title suggests otherwise, they are unusable constructions. The simple collection of boxes shows how shape, volume, color and balance arrange themselves in an arrangement that soon looks architectural. De Koning once said: ‘organizing space is also framing attention. The sculpture guides our gaze and shows the impact of color on our experience of space.’

Krijn de Koning is known for his temporary installations in museums, galleries and public spaces, in which the experience of space is central. His site-specific interventions are recognizable by their strong visual language of rectangular architectural forms and colored surfaces. His work is best described as sculptural but incorporates the qualities of both painting and architecture.

Krijn de Koning lives and works in Amsterdam. He was a resident at De Ateliers and graduated from the Rietveld Academie (NL) and the Institut Des Hautes Etudes En Art Plastique (FR). His work has been exhibited in various places including De Nieuwe Kerk, Amsterdam (NL); De Vleeshal, Middelburg (NL); Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (NL); Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam (NL); Stedelijk Museum Schiedam (NL); Centraal Museum, Utrecht (NL), and FRAC Lorraine, Metz (FR). In 2007, he received the Sikkens Prize.

In Floral Complexion (2024), Ana Navas (1984, Ecuador) fuses various visual elements in glass into a single whole. Her glassworks are technically related to glass painting, and the colours and forms are derived from details in the clothing and objects of historical female portraits. In this work, Navas explores the theme of the veil, which symbolizes the complexity of our perception. How we look at her layered assemblages reveals above all that our view of the world is colored by our personal history, the time we live in and our surroundings.

In Navas’ multidisciplinary work, subjects such as transformation, assimilation and appropriation play an important role. Through paintings, sculptures, assemblages and video work, she explores how images change when they shift context – from art to design, from high to popular culture. In her work, she brings these travelling motifs together and makes visible the transformations that images undergo as they move through time and between disciplines.

Ana Navas lives and works in Rotterdam (NL). She studied at the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste, Karlsruhe (DE), was Meisterschülerin with Franz Ackermann and a resident at De Ateliers, Amsterdam (NL). Her work has been exhibited at NEST, The Hague (NL); Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (NL); Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden (DE) and Nixon, Mexico City (MX). In 2018, she received the Kalinowski Prize and in 2020 the NN Group Art Award.

The work STACK gold-gold-yellow (2020) forms part of a series of blobs that Hester Oerlemans (1961, Netherlands) developed during a stay at the Chinese European Art Center in Xiamen (CN). Over the course of six months, obliged by the pandemic to prolong her visit, Oerlemans investigated how to use air to make three-dimensional sculptures. How do you find a form for something as intangible as air? Oerlemans’ blobs are created by blowing up different sorts of balloons. She succeeds in fastening these inflated balloons together through a complicated process, and pours a thin layer of epoxy resin over them. When the balloons have deflated a thin shell of epoxy resin remains, a solidified memory of air.

Oerlemans’ oeuvre comprises drawings, paintings, installations, videos and sculptures. In these she interweaves different worlds, playful interventions and a commentary on our everyday reality. The visual language that this creates is poetic and critical at the same time.

Hester Oerlemans lives and works in Arnhem (NL) and Berlin (DE). She graduated from the ArtEZ Hogeschool voor de Kunsten, Arnhem. The work of Oerlemans has been exhibited at numerous locations, including Museum De Pont, Tilburg (NL), Club Solo, Breda (NL) and Haus der Kunst, Munich (DE). In 2025, she was awarded the Wilhelminaring.

In Perpetuum we follow the mesmerizing image of a figure that bounces through an everchanging landscape like someone on a trampoline. Air, water, earth, fire, the universe; full of bravura, the figure leaps into the unknown. Perpetuum by Jacco Olivier (1972, the Netherlands) is an ode to lightness and freedom. In all its attractiveness the work invites reflection on our own sense of freedom and its restrictions.

By endlessly adapting paintings and systematically recording the intermediate stages, painting and film merge in the oeuvre of Olivier. The photographed stages are assembled into mysterious animations - hovering between figuration and abstraction, they reveal working traces and decisions made during the painting process. Olivierʼs films are windows on seemingly simple moments, which nevertheless harbor an uncomfortable tension, a feeling that something beyond our control is about to happen or has already happened.

Jacco Olivier was resident at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten Amsterdam. His work has been exhibited all over the world, at locations including Kunstmuseum The Hague, Frans Hals Museum in Haarlem, Dordrechts Museum, ZKM, Karlsruhe, Sammlung Goetz in Munchen and the 56th Venice Biennale. In 2019 Olivier won the Jeanne Oosting Prijs for figurative painting.

Untitled (1995) by Jan van de Pavert (1960, Netherlands) is reminiscent of the scale models used by architects. The sculpture evokes associations with architects such as Gerrit Rietveld, Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier, who strongly connect interior and exterior space. As the eye follows the corridors through and around the sculpture, it repeatedly encounters impenetrable walls and obstacles. Van de Pavert takes us playfully, so that physical space slowly converges with a mental space to wander through.

Van de Pavert began his career with spatial works composed of architectural elements isolated from their surroundings. A recurring theme in that work is the theater: the stage and the audience. Starting in 1994, he began making computer-animated films of these architectural spaces. A final translation is the mural, which would initially be embedded in his computer-manipulated spaces, but now stand on their own.

Jan van de Pavert lives and works in Rotterdam (NL). He studied at the St. Joost art academy and was a resident at Ateliers ‘63, Haarlem. His work has been shown at Centraal Museum, Utrecht (NL) Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam (NL) and the Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterloo (NL). In 1988, Van de Pavert won the Prix de Rome.

A pair of pointe shoes is tightly wrapped around the branches of a Hedera helix (ivy). Like a living sculpture, the tangle of branches forms a dancer, the table a stage. In Dubbele Helix (II) (2025) by Bart Pols (1992, Netherlands), human and nature dance together, inextricably connected. The work is a celebration of life itself and touches on traditional themes of sculpture: equilibrium and balance, verticality and gravity, craft and 'deskilling' – the deliberate abandonment of technical mastery. In his search for the role of the amateur, Pols flirts with the amateurish.

Pols' work encompasses drawings, collages, paintings, sculptures and performances. From an autobiographical starting point, he translates apparent oppositions into image: life and death, love and jealousy, comedy and tragedy. This fascination is also visible in his use of materials – wood, ceramics, plastic, textile and readymades are brought together into a coherent whole. Humor plays a subtle role, as a means to approach complex themes and create space for perspective and hope.

Bart Pols lives and works in Arnhem (NL). He studied at ArtEZ University of the Arts, Arnhem  and was selected for Best of Graduates at Ron Mandos, Amsterdam (NL) in 2021. His work has been  exhibited in galleries and art institutions, including Drawing Centre Diepenheim; KunstpodiumT, Tilburg and Omstand, Arnhem (NL).

The room depicted by Michael Raedecker (1963, Netherlands) lies somewhere between a real and a mental space. The title suggests that the drifting embroideries floating in the room are part of a hallucinatory experience. As silent witnesses to daily life – the countless hours we’ve forgotten, the fleeting moments we wish to remember forever – Raedecker’s works take on the character of props in an endless domestic narrative.

Raedecker puts a new spin on traditional subjects in his oeuvre by applying methods and processes typically not associated with painting. His work is characterized by emptiness and minimal use of color. Since the beginning of his career as a painter, Raedecker has incorporated embroidery into his paintings. Thread and paint create a visual contrast and lend the work a sculptural quality.

Michael Raedecker studied at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten in Amsterdam and Goldsmiths College (UK). His work has been widely exhibited, including at the Kunstmuseum Den Haag (NL); the Sprengel Museum, Hannover (DE); Tate Britain, London (UK); and the Galeria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna (IT). Raedecker received the Royal Prize for Painting (1993), the Prix de Rome (1994), and the prestigious British John Moore Painting Prize (1999).

In Heidrun Rathgeb's (1967, Germany) enchantingly small egg tempera paintings, the most intimate everyday moments are captured. The silence and joy of a moment seep through all her work. In an idiosyncratic and unruly palette, we witness simmering moonlight, a sleeping child, or a candle still burning beside the bed. The small diptychs and triptychs, on wooden panels that can be opened like books, recall the early devotional images that believers carried with them for personal contemplation.

Rathgeb is an artist and adventurer. Her works emerge during long hikes along the lakes and mountains of Europe, alone or with her children. Along the way, she makes sketches in small A6 notebooks, in black and white; the colors present themselves later in egg tempera, from memory and feeling. Her fine brushwork and saturated colors recall the Sienese painters of the early Renaissance. These are works to unfold, to pause before.

Heidrun Rathgeb lives and works in southern Germany. She studied at the Byam Shaw School of Art and the Slade School of Fine Art in London (UK). Her work has been widely exhibited in galleries and art institutions, including the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, London (UK). In 2026 she was nominated for the Hopper Prize.

There is something unreal about this couple dancing with complete abandon. Their features are simplified, their skin smooth as porcelain – it is as if we are looking at puppets. In Dans (2011), Wouter van Riessen (1967, Netherlands) plays with the tension between the living and the lifeless, between human and doll. The bright colors and stylized forms give the work a playful, almost childlike appearance. But behind the play lurks the puppeteer – and the question of who is pulling the strings.

Puppets fascinate Van Riessen. He finds them enigmatic: it is impossible to see them as mere lifeless objects, although it is clear that is what they are. In paint, puppet and human are equals – both live solely in the imagination of whoever looks at them. Van Riessen wants to bring lightness to his work, creating clear images that carry questions of substance within themselves while evoking an almost childlike immediacy.

Wouter van Riessen lives and works in Amsterdam (NL). He studied at ArtEZ Arnhem and the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten, Amsterdam. His work has been exhibited at Kunstmuseum Den Haag; Stedelijk Museum Schiedam; Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam; Museum Arnhem (NL) and Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin (DE). In 1994, he won the Royal Award for Modern Painting.

Maria Roosen (1957, Netherlands) is known for her glass works and watercolors. In Droomhuis (2002), Roosen creates a small ceramic model based on the house she bought in northern France in 2000. While shaping the clay, Roosen recalled the spaces of the home through memory and in doing so, created a sculpture with slightly off proportions. Roosen gives the house a dreamlike quality, whilst still feeling like home. Encased in gold leaf, the modest building is transformed into something precious and symbolic.

In Roosen’s work, objects often function as what she calls ‘tools for feeling’. Rather than precise representations, they evoke memories, desires, and emotional associations. Droomhuis suggests that the idea of ‘home’ is not only tied to a physical place but also to imagination and personal experience. The sculpture balances familiarity and fantasy, turning a simple house into an image of longing, comfort, and the inner landscapes we carry with us.

Maria Roosen lives and works in Arnhem (NL). She graduated from the Mollerinstituut, Tilburg and ArtEZ Hogeschool voor de Kunsten, Arnhem (NL). Her work has been exhibited at various locations across the Netherlands, including Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam and Stedelijk Museum Schiedam. Roosen represented the Netherlands at the Venice Biennale in 1995. She was awarded the Wilhelminaring in 2006 and the Singer Prize in 2009.

A silence falling at a table, a breath between two thoughts: six small portraits, Sabrina Rosenheim (1998, United Kingdom) illuminates the space between our human actions. The paintings embody the silence between action, exploring how formative that pause is for what comes before and after. Her intimate portraits inhabit an in-between: between languages, presence and absence, movement and stillness.

Rosenheim moves in her work between traditional painting and digital animation. While this series of portraits is an ode to stillness, in her broader practice Rosenheim focuses on themes of language and translation. Her multilingual background – French, English and Arabic – forms the basis of her exploration of what it means to move between languages and traditions. The idea of 'The Third Space' – the hybrid in-between that emerges when cultures meet – underpins all her work.

Sabrina Rosenheim lives and works in Milan (IT). She studied at Goldsmiths, University of London (UK). Her work has been exhibited at the Royal Over-Seas League, London (UK) and OVADA Gallery, Oxford (UK).

A monumental close-up of golden heels – gleaming, reptilian – drowns out everything around it. At the bottom of the billboard, a figure in work overalls literally pushes the image aside. In High (2009), Marike Schuurman (1964, Netherlands) captures a collision that occurs daily in the city but rarely draws attention: the confrontation between the glossy promises of advertizing and the labor that maintains this infrastructure.

The work is part of the series Plots, in which Schuurman captures banners intended to conceal emptiness but instead create new, hybrid spaces. She frames the billboard as it functions: as a dominant fiction that envelops and directs urban space. At the same time, she reveals the fault lines – the metal frame, the seams in the print material – causing the slick illusion to falter. The advertisement becomes sculpture, the street becomes a backdrop.

Marike Schuurman lives and works in Berlin (DE) and Amsterdam (NL). She studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie and was a resident at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten (NL). Her work has been exhibited at Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (NL); Foam, Amsterdam (NL); Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin (DE); Helmhaus, Zurich (CH) and KINDL Centre for Contemporary Art, Berlin (DE).

Who allowed you to live beautifully? (2024) by Anton Shebetko (1990, Ukraine) seems to address the viewer personally. However, the work has a complex meaning. The sentence was initially attributed to Russian occupiers who allegedly left it on a destroyed building in Kiev. Only later did it become clear that the graffiti was applied and recorded in Russia as early as 2016. The mistake has meant that the phrase has come to symbolize the impact of fake news and the role of information warfare in modern conflicts.

Shebetko’s art practice includes photography, video, installation, neon, printmaking, performance and interventions. His work is an ongoing investigation into Ukraine’s forgotten queer history. By excavating archival material and photography, he hopes to reveal stories that would otherwise remain hidden and restore a historical identity to the LGBTQIA+ community. Part of this history has been published in his book A Very Brief and Subjective Queer History of Ukraine (2022).

Anton Shebetko currently lives in Amsterdam, where he received his bachelor’s degree from the Gerrit Rietveld Academy. Shebetko received the RM Residency Award and the Where Love Is Illegal Fellowship. His work has been exhibited among others at Foam and Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (NL); Frei_raum Q21, Vienna (AT); Photo Elysée, Lausanne (CH); CENTQUATRE-PARIS (FR); BWA Studio, Wroclaw (PL); Württembergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart (DE) and Mystetskyi Arsenal, Kiev (UA).

A woman stands among her wares on a bridge, against a backdrop of rice fields, and an almost dried-up river. Above the rice fields rise the colossal pillars of a bridge connecting two cities. The friction between the old landscape and urbanisation is sharply felt. Berend Strik (1960, Netherlands) took the photograph on the border of China and Vietnam and reworked the image with fabric and thread – the figure of the woman thereby gains a tangible presence, while the world around her recedes into the background.

Strik subjects his photographs to an intensive reworking process – the embroidery slows down our looking and intensifies both image and content. By covering parts of the photograph he creates different layers of meaning. The intimate, time-consuming act of stitching stands in contrast to the mechanical click of the camera. In his work, high and low culture exist side by side – images he finds or takes during his travels gain a new, physical layer through the reworking.

Berend Strik lives and works in Amsterdam (NL). He studied at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten, Amsterdam. His work has been exhibited at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam; Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam; Fries Museum, Leeuwarden; Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem (NL) and the Museum of Arts & Design, New York (US). In 1987, he received the Prix de Rome (2nd prize) and in 1990 the Charlotte Köhler Prize.

There is something heroic about this still creature by Johan Tahon (1965, Belgium). The mythical Sedna, Mother of the Sea in Inuit mythology, fuels our fascination with the deep sea, and implores us to protect what we barely know and can even less comprehend. Not entirely human, not entirely wonder, she displays great willpower and a strong spirit, in harmony with nature. In Sedna, Tahon embodies the power of the hidden and the value of the depth in which lies the opportunity to transcend superficiality.

Alone, and in the stillness of his own studio, Tahon processes the materials from which he constructs his sculptures. He casts clay and uses the moulds from these castings to make new works. The casting moulds can be traced in the end result by the thick seams that run over the sculpture. The glaze that he pours over his tranquil figures creates an intriguing interplay of drips and pools.

Johan Tahon lives and works in Sint-Denijs-Boekel (BE). He studied at KASK, Ghent (BE). His work has been frequently and internationally exhibited, including at the Istanbul Biennale (TR), the Royal Museums of Fine Arts, Brussels (BE); Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht (NL); and the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (NL). His work is part of various national and international collections.

When you look at this photo, you see a space made up of whitish-gray panels. The panels are cut into a pattern of irregular shapes, stacked into columns. It’s a ragged construction that feels both familiar and strange. It looks like a building, yet at the same time, it is not, because in this image, nothing is what it once was.

Large-scale architectural installations in derelict buildings scheduled for demolition are central to the artistic practice of Marjan Teeuwen (1953, Netherlands). Teeuwen breaks down the ceilings, walls and floors of chosen houses and rearranges the resulting debris into architectural sculptures, thus creating new vistas and rhythms within the existing structure. Autonomous photo pieces form the only remaining traces of Teeuwen’s interventions after the wrecking ball has done its work. They function as lieux de mémoire, speaking to the dialectical forces of construction, destruction, order and chaos Teeuwen considers intrinsic to the human condition.

Marjan Teeuwen graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts, Tilburg, and the Academy of Fine Arts St. Joost, Breda (NL). Her independent photographic work has been exhibited at numerous locations, including Museum De Lakenhal, Leiden (NL); Nederlands Fotomuseum, Rotterdam (NL); Cobra Museum, Amstelveen (NL) and various national and international art events. Teeuwen’s work is included in private and public collections, such as the Centraal Museum, Utrecht (NL) and the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (NL).

This striking portrait of a young Queen Beatrix is part of the series Reigning Queens (1985), one of Andy Warhol's (1928-1987, United States) last major projects. In the series, Warhol captures the only four reigning queens of the time: Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom, Margrethe II of Denmark, Ntombi Twala of Swaziland and Beatrix of the Netherlands. Warhol based the portraits on official state photographs, images that circulated widely on postage stamps and coins. With characteristic color contrasts and stylized contours, he transformed them into icons of popular culture.

Warhol is synonymous with Pop Art. Drawing on his background in advertising, he combined artistic avant-garde with a keen sense of commerce. His silkscreen prints of mass products such as Campbell's soup cans and Coca-Cola bottles made him world-famous. Using the same technique, he portrayed celebrities like Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor – and queens. In his hands, the industrial silkscreen became an art form in its own right.

Andy Warhol lived and worked in New York (US). He studied at the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh (US). His work is held in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York (US); Tate Modern, London (UK); Centre Pompidou, Paris (FR) and the Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh (US).

The paintings of Markus Weggenmann (1953, Germany) appear as frozen brushstrokes – enlarged, stilled, stripped of all chance. What begins as a fleeting movement in gouache on paper undergoes a careful process of digital manipulation: structures are dissolved, contours partially straightened, motifs layered, colors corrected. The final step is the blow-up to large format, executed by a car painter. The result is a perfect industrial surface in high-gloss lacquer on aluminum, in which the artist's handwriting nonetheless remains clearly legible.

Weggenmann looks at his medium with a detached, analytical and ironic gaze. His work references the Abstract Expressionists, yet he simultaneously compares his paintings to the perfection of a brand-new car. The reflective surface deflects the viewer's gaze – truly penetrating the work proves impossible. Yet the images evoke associations with reality: a winding mountain road, a racing circuit, or simply the frozen movement of a hand.

Markus Weggenmann lives and works in Berlin (DE) and Zurich (CH). He is self-taught. His work has been exhibited at Kunstmuseum Bonn; Kunstmuseum Singen; Kunsthalle Bremerhaven (DE); Haus Konstruktiv, Zurich ; Kunsthalle Zurich and Museum Liner, Appenzell (CH).

The paintings of Markus Weggenmann (1953, Germany) appear as frozen brushstrokes – enlarged, stilled, stripped of all chance. What begins as a fleeting movement in gouache on paper undergoes a careful process of digital manipulation: structures are dissolved, contours partially straightened, motifs layered, colors corrected. The final step is the blow-up to large format, executed by a car painter. The result is a perfect industrial surface in high-gloss lacquer on aluminum, in which the artist's handwriting nonetheless remains clearly legible.

Weggenmann looks at his medium with a detached, analytical and ironic gaze. His work references the Abstract Expressionists, yet he simultaneously compares his paintings to the perfection of a brand-new car. The reflective surface deflects the viewer's gaze – truly penetrating the work proves impossible. Yet the images evoke associations with reality: a winding mountain road, a racing circuit, or simply the frozen movement of a hand.

Markus Weggenmann lives and works in Berlin (DE) and Zurich (CH). He is self-taught. His work has been exhibited at Kunstmuseum Bonn; Kunstmuseum Singen; Kunsthalle Bremerhaven (DE); Haus Konstruktiv, Zurich ; Kunsthalle Zurich and Museum Liner, Appenzell (CH).

The paintings of Markus Weggenmann (1953, Germany) appear as frozen brushstrokes – enlarged, stilled, stripped of all chance. What begins as a fleeting movement in gouache on paper undergoes a careful process of digital manipulation: structures are dissolved, contours partially straightened, motifs layered, colors corrected. The final step is the blow-up to large format, executed by a car painter. The result is a perfect industrial surface in high-gloss lacquer on aluminum, in which the artist's handwriting nonetheless remains clearly legible.

Weggenmann looks at his medium with a detached, analytical and ironic gaze. His work references the Abstract Expressionists, yet he simultaneously compares his paintings to the perfection of a brand-new car. The reflective surface deflects the viewer's gaze – truly penetrating the work proves impossible. Yet the images evoke associations with reality: a winding mountain road, a racing circuit, or simply the frozen movement of a hand.

Markus Weggenmann lives and works in Berlin (DE) and Zurich (CH). He is self-taught. His work has been exhibited at Kunstmuseum Bonn; Kunstmuseum Singen; Kunsthalle Bremerhaven (DE); Haus Konstruktiv, Zurich ; Kunsthalle Zurich and Museum Liner, Appenzell (CH).

The paintings of Markus Weggenmann (1953, Germany) appear as frozen brushstrokes – enlarged, stilled, stripped of all chance. What begins as a fleeting movement in gouache on paper undergoes a careful process of digital manipulation: structures are dissolved, contours partially straightened, motifs layered, colors corrected. The final step is the blow-up to large format, executed by a car painter. The result is a perfect industrial surface in high-gloss lacquer on aluminum, in which the artist's handwriting nonetheless remains clearly legible.

Weggenmann looks at his medium with a detached, analytical and ironic gaze. His work references the Abstract Expressionists, yet he simultaneously compares his paintings to the perfection of a brand-new car. The reflective surface deflects the viewer's gaze – truly penetrating the work proves impossible. Yet the images evoke associations with reality: a winding mountain road, a racing circuit, or simply the frozen movement of a hand.

Markus Weggenmann lives and works in Berlin (DE) and Zurich (CH). He is self-taught. His work has been exhibited at Kunstmuseum Bonn; Kunstmuseum Singen; Kunsthalle Bremerhaven (DE); Haus Konstruktiv, Zurich ; Kunsthalle Zurich and Museum Liner, Appenzell (CH).

The Society Architect Ponders the Golden Gate Bridge (1997) refers to an opera for which Lawrence Weiner (1942-2021, United States) provided the stage design and libretto. The opera’s plot is based on an actual court case: on the Golden Gate Bridge, an artist is hit by a car driven by a drunken architect. In the court case, however, a paradoxical twist occurs, the artist becomes the defendant under the examination of a reactionary judge. The result is an ordinary accident turned into a political debate about the artist’s role and value in society.

Although Lawrence Weiner saw himself as a sculptor rather than a conceptualist, he was among the trailblazers of the 1960s to present art as language. Weiner’s work exists of languages and materials to which language referred; using language itself as a sculptural fact. In addition to his sculptures, Weiner produced music, films, and videos, as well as artist books and editions, throughout his career.

Lawrence Weiner worked primarily in New York (USA) and, since the early 1970s, also frequently in Amsterdam (NL). Starting in the 1960s, he became one of the leading figures in conceptual art. Weiner had solo exhibitions at, among others, the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (NL); Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (ES); Whitney Museum, New York (USA); and MoCA, Los Angeles (USA). His work was featured in documenta 5, 6, 7, and 13, as well as the 36th, 41st, 50th, and 55th editions of the Venice Biennale. Weiner won numerous international awards, including the Roswitha Haftmann Foundation Prize (2015) and posthumously, the Oskar Kokoschka Award (2022).

In his work, Måns Wrange (1961, Sweden) explores the boundaries of knowledge and curiosity, playing with the way we engage with information. The Unfinished Book (1998) offers an answer to all your pressing questions. So, ask away! The book responds to sound waves entering through a horn, with a refined mechanism causing it to spin and randomly open to a passage from a famous philosopher. This unexpected moment connects the viewer with new ideas and concepts. The interaction serves as a metaphor for the endless cycle of questions and answers in philosophy, where each discovery always leads to more questions. The Unfinished Book (1998) reminds us that knowledge is never complete, but always evolving: a continuous process of reflection and wonder.

Måns Wrange lives and works in Stockholm (SE). Wrange studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm and at the Berghs School of Communication in Stockholm. His work has been exhibited internationally, including at MoMA PS1, New York (US); Moderna Museet, Stockholm (SE); Santa Monica Museum of Art (US); Manifesta, at the Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna (AT); and The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (US). His work is included in the collections of Malmö Konstmuseum and Moderna Museet, both in Sweden.

Robert Zandvliet (1970, Netherlands) is known for his tempera paintings, in which the boundaries between abstraction and figuration are explored. In this composition, the speed of the brush is palpable, and in the contrasting planes of color an image we recognize reveals itself. The artist's starting point for Untitled (1994) was an old-fashioned poffertjes stall. In sunny yellow, the canopy and base of the stall can be made out. The dark, partial 'framing' of the image and its skewed perspective contribute to a sense of weightlessness; of an object floating in an undefined space.

In Zandvliet's paintings, composition and chance, abstraction and figuration, space and surface merge. He often takes the landscape as his starting point, but instead of a realistic depiction he opts for a carefully orchestrated play of light and shadow, line, color and depth. This causes foreground and background to slide into one another, tilting our sense of space.

Robert Zandvliet lives and works in Haarlem (NL). He studied at the Hogeschool voor de Kunsten Constantijn Huygens, Kampen and was a resident at De Ateliers in Amsterdam (NL). His work has been exhibited widely including Kunstmuseum Den Haag, The Hague; De Pont, Tilburg; Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (NL); Kunstmuseum Luzern (CH) and Kunstmuseum Bonn (DE). For his work he received the Prix de Rome (1994), the Charlotte Köhler Prize (1998) and the Wolvecamp Prize (2004).

In a kitchen bathed in purple light, a man crouches on the floor. The open refrigerator offers no food, but a starry night sky. On the counter, a flock of pigeons has claimed the space. In Chores (2025), Bo Zhang (1988, China) transforms an everyday domestic scene into a surreal dreamscape, where the boundary between the familiar and the uncanny dissolves without a sound.

Zhang draws inspiration from her immediate surroundings and personal experiences. In her paintings, she captures underlying tensions between people, animals, and their environment. By defamiliarizing the everyday, amplifying fleeting moments, and employing a color palette inspired by animal vision, dream and reality bleed into one another. Birds are a recurring motif – as a lifelong bird keeper, Zhang knows their intelligence and idiosyncrasies intimately. In her work, they become a metaphor for a more complete perception of the world.

Bo Zhang lives and works in Munich (DE) and Amsterdam (NL). She studied Expanded Painting (DOGtime) at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam and holds a PhD in Cognitive Psychology from the University of Twente in Enschede (NL). She previously obtained an MSc in Human Factors Engineering from the Technical University of Munich (DE) and a BSc in Industrial Design from the Harbin Institute of Technology in Harbin (CN). In 2025, her work was selected for Best of Graduates at Ron Mandos, Amsterdam.

Yellow Dots #01 (2017) by Daan Zuijderwijk (1974, Netherlands) is a captivating photograph that blurs the line between nature and imagination. Taken during one of his night-time explorations through remote European landscapes, the image shows a mountain valley dotted with glowing yellow spheres, as if mysterious celestial bodies have landed on Earth. Yellow Dots #01 challenges how we view and interact with our environment. By inserting subtle artificial elements into untouched settings, Zuijderwijk doesn’t disturb nature, he reveals its hidden poetry. The result is both surreal and meditative, a visual invitation to reimagine our place within the more-than-human world.

The works of Zuijderwijk are produced over many hours of walking, running and climbing across European landscapes at night. By adding lines, circles, color or lights to his images, Zuijderwijk “manipulates” the landscape to reveal hidden aspects and highlight that our perception of landscape is a combination of senses and imagination. In 2017, he and his family began living nomadically, seeking a life closer to nature with a small ecological footprint. Zuijderwijk’s work reflects his desire to reconnect with nature through this nomadic lifestyle.

Daan Zuiderwijk lives and works nomadically across Europe. He graduated from the St. Joost School of Art & Design, Breda (NL). In 2006, he established an artist duo with, Maaike Vergouwe, and in 2019, together published the book ‘Mapping’. His work has been exhibited at galleries worldwide.