Frank van Hemert (1956)

Frank van Hemert - born in 1956 in Kerkrade, Netherlands. From 1975 to 1979, he studied at the TeHaTex in Tilburg, and from 1980 to 1982, he attended Atelier 63 in Haarlem. In the early 80s, he was discovered as a young talent and received an invitation from curator Rudi Fuchs to participate in Documenta 7 in Kassel. His works are represented in numerous museums, private and public collections.

The versatility of his work, both on canvas and on paper, is evident in the extensive series he has created on the most important themes of life, such as death, suffering, isolation, love, erotic experiences, and the question of one's own identity. Frank van Hemert uses both non-objective and figurative directions. In some works, the figurative echoes are so strong that the balance between figure and ground threatens to fall apart. By detecting the aura of his figures, he strives to find a physically tangible force, which he expresses through his mastery of painting.

Tineke Porck (1954)

Tineke Porck's oeuvre is intimately tied to constructivism, zero, and minimal art. Her work distinguishes itself through a deeply personal character and an investigative, cohesive development. Both her early sculptures and her recent pieces exude a distinct set of principles. Rather than relying on mathematical foundations, her works are instinctively composed.

Consistently, Porck's forms, colors, and compositions display a modesty. Her playful originality within the constraints of constructivism, the experimental approach driven by a strong concept, the cohesiveness of her oeuvre, the artistry, and the authentic passion of Porck are key ingredients in attaining a high level of quality.

The works from the recent series 'Shifts' are what may be called "sculptural paintings." This series is the result of years of research into the conceptual and concrete visual arts.

All of Porck's work revolves around connections, space, and structure. The Shifts series investigates the effect of shifting identical elements and the significance of color, horizontal and vertical elements. The synergy between the individual elements and the space they occupy is crucial to the experience. The specific structure of the surface of the work also contributes to this. Painting and space unite to form a construction.

Arie van Geest (1948)

Arie van Geest (1948) resides and has his studio in Rotterdam. This city is where he honed his skills at the Academy of Fine Arts in the 1960s. A versatile artist, his expertise spans various mediums including graphic design, drawing, painting, and mural art. Having also taught for thirty years at the art academy in Rotterdam, van Geest's work is known for its imaginative worlds and scenes. He draws inspiration from literature, particularly the dark fairytales of the Brothers Grimm and Charles Perrault. During his studies, van Geest received advice from his teacher Klaas Gubbels to paint what he envisions, rather than what he sees

This is what van Geest says about his work

Halfway through the sixties, I discovered Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There, Comte de Lautréamont's Les Chants de Maldoror, and Bob Dylan's double LP Blonde on Blonde, released in 1966.

These three narratives serve as the foundation for the paintings I have been producing since 1968. Deceased Hans Sonnenberg, manager of Gallery Delta Rotterdam, with whom I collaborated between 1973 and 2017, referred to me as a typical representative of everyday mythology. My visions of paint are rooted in both language and image. In a sense, I experience painting as a gentle form of schizophrenia.

Each painting contains the blueprint for the next canvas. From the start of my career, series have been created regularly. Some within the span of a week: Tableau Mourant (1984), while others, such as The Broken Promised Land (TBPL; 2012-2019), took years to complete.

Both FTN and S&O art collections have works form Arie van Geest in their collections.

"I paint to clarify my relationship with things and the world," declares Toon Teeken. The artist, painter, and draftsman, born in 1944 in Heerlen, incorporates in his drawings, gouaches, and paintings the relationships between his inner world and the perception of the absurd outer world. To achieve this, Teeken uses new symbols and cliché images, to which he adds new meanings.

His inspiration comes from language, letters, signs, photos of dancers, and images of renowned artists and musicians. These sources inspire him to defy the often-used motto 'Less is more'; his swirling world of people, animals, cartoon characters, and Pinocchio in vibrant colors embodies Teeken's motto of 'More is more'.

The trips the artist has made to Africa and Suriname have influenced him to apply new motifs and compositions in his creations. As a result, black men wearing masks and props are depicted dancing and fighting on the horizon of the African landscape. Colors from the Surinamese rainforest are combined with the visual composition of the Italian Renaissance and Baroque art in Rome and Florence.

Another source of inspiration for Teeken are the retrospective exhibitions of writer and artist Marcel Broodthaers in Brussels. He feels a connection to the ideas of this remarkable visual and language artist. This is why he has incorporated Broodthaers' portrait multiple times in his paintings. Teeken has exhibited his work at various locations including the Museum Het Valkhof in Nijmegen, the Stedelijk Museum in Schiedam, the Stadsgalerij Heerlen, the Bonnefantenmuseum in Maastricht, and the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam. His art has been included in the collections of museums, businesses, and institutions such as the Centraal Museum Utrecht and the Museum van Bommel van Dam in Venlo. Multiple books have been written about the artist, such as "More is More" published in 2006, but he himself has also worked on photobooks for over forty years. Teeken, who received the Royal Grant for Visual Arts in 1978, currently resides and works in Maastricht.

Toon Teeken

"What do I want to achieve with my art? What I want to achieve with my life! Tension & calm, love & hate, order & chaos, success & deception. In short, EVERYTHING and therefore NOTHING. I am not aiming to reach a specific place with "my art," but rather, I am constantly moving towards and away from something," writes Ploeg during his studies at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy. In the same note, he describes 'tradition' as nothing more than a series of images and objects collected by art historians in books and museums. He wonders what they may have overlooked.

Quest for abstraction
The exhibition at Kunstmuseum showcases a cross section of Ploeg's entire oeuvre: alongside around seventy paintings, there are also video clips and abstract video art. In the early years, Ploeg is part of the Nieuwe Wilden (New Wild Ones) movement and produces neo-expressionist works, raw and colorful. Later on, he develops a unique visual language, rich in imagination and often bringing a smile to the viewer's face. The artist searches for abstraction and frequently chooses bright colors and simple, mostly geometric forms. The digital forms he discovers in his computer art later on influence his painting. In contrast to the prevailing trend at the time, his work becomes more abstract and incorporates elements of De Stijl, Picasso, and cubism, as well as suprematism (Paul Mansouroff). However, Ploeg never fully achieves abstraction in his painting. As he acknowledged himself, there is always a face that creeps in.

Maarten Ploeg

Ellen Schippers is a multi-disciplinair artist, who works as a fashion designer, video-artist and photographer. She creates Performances with Wearable Sculptures and Art Theater. Besides she realizes theatrical installations with videos and photos.

Schippers art is about female images, the ideals of beauty and about the cradiction between self-image and authenticity.

She creates inner portraits of women in a mysterious atmosphere, which gives the viewers room for their own associations and emotions.our text here...

Ellen Schippers

Philip Smith (1952)

Philip Smith's artistic creations are painstakingly crafted through a unique blend of photography, drawing, and painting. His distinct language of portraying marks and imagery stems from an expansive collection of 35mm film negatives. These negatives are utilized by the artist to capture diagrams, illustrations, and symbols borrowed from a diverse range of cultural sources, including 1950s Cold War espionage guidelines, mystical texts, advertisements for lingerie, and charts of numerology.

To bring his vision to life, Smith diligently applies layers of wax or a gesso medium to the canvas, creating a rich and textured surface. He then begins the creative process by sketching out the composition with oil pastels, only to deconstruct it later through a meticulous process of erasure. The result is a thought-provoking and strangely unfamiliar piece of art that encapsulates the untapped potential of these visual fragments. Through his masterful use of pigment, surface, and scale, Smith expertly hints at the presence of the enigmatic and the unseen.

Joris Geurts (1958)

Joris Geurts, renowned for his lyrical abstract paintings, drawings, and prints, has dedicated himself more to creating works on paper in the last decade. They are made with acrylic paint, diluted with a lot of water, and applied with broad brushstrokes on various paper sizes. These watercolors are transparently layered and traceable, with deep purplish blue tones, gray shades, and yellowish-green colors evocative of the cosmos or the landscape. In this exhibition, he showcases a new series of works on paper.

Born in Oss (Netherlands) in 1958, Geurts studied at the AKI in Enschede. After his studies, he began his career in the early 1980s at Art & Project Gallery in Amsterdam. Since 1995, he has consistently exhibited at Slewe Gallery. In addition to his painting practice, he also works as a composer of music. His works have been collected by various important public collections, such as the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Museum Boijmans van Beuningen in Rotterdam, Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum Twenthe in Enschede, Noordbrabants Museum in Den Bosch, as well as private collections including AkzoNobel, ABNAMRO, KPN, BPD, and AEGON.

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