Landschap en Herinnering

Celine van den Boorn en Olphaert den Otter

9 mei- 6 juni

Opening za 9 mei 18.00-20.00, food and drinks will be served
The exhibition will be opened by Esmee Postma, recensent, writer

Nieuw Charlois
Huismanstraat 30
Rotterdam
Open from Thu-Sat 10- 5 pm

The opening will be performed by Esmee Postma, reviewer of modern and contemporary visual art for De Volkskrant. She reviews exhibitions, profiles artists, and identifies trends within the arts. Additionally, she writes for various art magazines and serves as a publications editor at Museum Boijmans van Beuningen Rotterdam. She will talk with the two artists about the works in the show.

Céline van den Boorn paints over the people in the images she uses. They literally disappear from the frame and are absorbed into the surrounding landscape, which suddenly takes center stage.

Olphaert den Otter does not even paint the people. In his work, only the landscapes remain, which do bear the traces of what people have done there.

Both artists take current images from the news as their starting point. The usually unsettling subject, with the human as the protagonist, disappears in their paintings through their intervention, while traces of human presence remain subtly visible. Strangely enough, the absence of people does not make the works empty. On the contrary, the very absence leads to an intuitive search by the viewer. And this search raises questions. What is not visible makes the works more complex and layered. The viewer has a task: to take a stand, to empathize, to fill in the blanks, perhaps even: self-examination.

I'm very pleased to share that this work is now in the art collection of UMC Amsterdam, on show at location VU.

Opening January 31 from 15:00

openig words around 18:00 by ; Theo Wesselo, Fen Verstappen, Michelle Schimscheimer

A group exhibition revolving around the theme ’Empathy’

With work by: Kenneth Aidoo, Sam Andrea, Celine van den Boorn, Stijn ter Braak, Aldo van den Broek, Koos Buster, Tina Farifteh, Roos van Haaften, Tja Ling Hu, Ayşen Kaptanoğlu, Su Melo, Piet Parra, Maurice van Tellingen , Koen Vermeule, Theo Wesselo

January 31 2025 - March 15 2025

Van Bavink Gallery
243 Oosterdokskade Amsterdam

We celebrate our new location with the group exhibition ‘Promise that you will sing about me’. An exhibition that revolves around the theme Empathy. In the exhibition, a selection of artists present paintings, ceramic works, photographs, and installations that directly or indirectly reflect on the theme of empathy, explore the notion of empathy, or show works that evoke empathy.

In the 19th century, philosophers of aesthetics reflected on why art evoked emotions in people. They proposed the idea that art personifies, activating the viewer's memories and emotions. Empathy was the mysterious element that connected the artwork with the observer. In a hardened and divided world, we are quick to judge. We often make decisions based on feelings, prejudices, or first impressions. Art provides the means to clear this mental fog and introduces us to the stories of people across time and space. For its first exhibition in the new gallery, Vriend Van Bavink presents a theme that may be particularly relevant in an era where empathy is sometimes viewed by some as a weakness.