We thank you so much for coming to our opening and New Year's Reception! Despite the poor weather, it was a great turnout, and we made this event a warm, welcoming, and inspired start to 2023! Thank you for all your enthusiastic reactions to both of the shows!
To those who could not make it: both shows are on view until March 4th! Not to be missed!
TRASH FLOWERS - Stephen j Shanabrook (NYC) - solo exhibition
Stephen j Shanabrook is an American artist and an alumnus of the Ateliers has lived in The Netherlands and Russia for years but is now based in New York City. His work is a sculptural actualization of a life experience with the body and its shadow ever present within a precarious world. The work reflects a chaotic path in materials and processes, which throws back to his movements through contrasting cultures. The main idea of material for Stephen Shanabrook has always been the found object. Made out of chocolate, cotton candy, drug hubris, or found plastic, his sculptures are about manipulating a given material and treating it as a temporary guest in the artist's hands. Adding the further story to a found object comes a realization that the body and its' growing self is also a found object given to us for a brief moment to write upon our chronicle.
The new series "Trash Flowers" are works made exclusively from various plastics harvested from dumpsters in Russia and America. Shanabrook, a longtime garbage surfer, brings us the traditional floral motif constructed entirely from used plastic. The very detritus of civilized society that is harassing mother nature to its core is herein the building blocks from which these simple yet eloquent flower spring forth.
Artificial flower parts are the most common element, along with household plastic containers and PVC board for the backgrounds. The background pieces came from a printing shop's dumpster as cut-offs, which the artist lets dictate the size and the shape of the works in this series. In this way, he allows the original found object to transcend its new story.
The other material used is the plastic details from silk flowers after he stripped away all the silk. The actual flowers we see are, for the most part, imaginary constructs of the artist, making the plant from an array of plastic bits and flower parts from different types of plants. Once the elements are in place, Shanabrook uses his recipe for warming different kinds of plastic, which he has developed over the last twenty years. After the melting and pressing process, the artist continues to add, subtract and repress continuously, as a painter would do with paint on canvas.
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CA$H 23 - a group exhibition -
After CATCH '22, our first show of 2022, the gallery now kicks off 2023 with the group exhibition CA$H 23. Exhibiting artists: Alban Karsten, Bram Braam, Daan den Houter, Daniel Mullen, David Dimichele, Gerben Mulder, Hester Scheurwater, Isabelle Borges, Jan ten Have, Lies Kraal, Marilou van Lierop, Marloes Roeper, Mike Ottink, Pieter jan Martyn, Roderik Henderson, Saminte Ekeland, Stef Rijs, Tom Woestenborghs, Tycho van Zomeren en Yisu Kim.
The question is, who is ca$hing? The buyer, the artist, the gallery? Or... win-win: all of us?
