Marine Lover: Snakes and Metal
- Marlene Dumas
- Abraham Kritzman
- Violeta Paez Armando
- Ulay
- Müge Yilmaz
Opening: Saturday, 22nd October, 2022
Dates: 23rd October – 19th November 2022
Curated by Àngels Miralda
Elizabeth Xi Bauer Gallery and Bradwolff Projects present Marine Lover: Snakes and Metal. This upcoming exhibition follows Marine Lover: Wax and Water (19th August – 15th October 2022) an exhibition of works by Abraham Kritzman and Violeta Paez Armando at Sally’s Fault, Amsterdam.
Marine Lover: Snakes and Metal, curated by Àngels Miralda, at Bradwolff Projects, Amsterdam, will features works by Marlene Dumas, Abraham Kritzman, Violeta Paez Armando, Ulay and Müge Yilmaz.
The curator, Àngels Miralda, writes about shifting states of matter that have led to a reflection on artworks that pass through a liquid form:
In a city [Amsterdam] where streets are made of water that substance that flows into the heart of the land, I learned that a palm on the ground miraculously releases this omnipresent matter. Moisture hangs low touching the ground with its milky thick organs that leave a trace like slow moving slugs. Carrying with it soil, rock, and silt towards the open mouth, weaving ever-deeper fence-like channels, intertwining streams, individual islands that shift with sand like eels in the shallow banks. Green growth, tadpoles, water fleas, carp. Identical clouds on the wide-open sky – there are no mountains here to block the view of that continent. Sea-spray, kissing lovers, blood-drop, a tear on that cheek that tastes like the wild untamable sea.
Artworks also move through liquid states before taking their final form. There is the initial moment of creation when fundamental matter is in the process of becoming. Wax is molten, poured into casts or layered dips. Watercolour seeps and swims through paper fibres before evaporating and leaving pigment behind. Even oil paint dries on the studio wall before it is finally finished. In this second part of the Marine Lover we have taken this one step further – molten metal glows red with raging energy. Like the molten centre of the earth, this true liquid substance from which we live, we are barely ever able to see. The rugged mountain is but the dry crust that tops the currents of a red-hot interior core.
The exhibition will include an expanded text on each artist as well as the significance of transformations of matter, art, and landscape through tactility.
Notes to Editors
Born in Cape Town, South Africa, in 1953, and having lived and worked in Amsterdam since 1976, Marlene Dumas is one of the Netherland’s most widely celebrated artists. From 1978 she has exhibited internationally. In 1995 she represented Holland at the Venice Biennale, and in 1996 the Tate Gallery exhibited a selection of her works on paper.
Dumas obtained a in B.A. Fine Arts Degree and Ethics at Cape Town University. Following this, the artist moved to the Netherlands to study art at Ateliers ‘63 in Haarlem. It was at this time her work was purchased by the Stedelijk, her first sale to a museum.
In 1984 the first solo museum show of her work, Ons land licht lager dan de zee, was held at Centraal Museum in Utrecht. During the 1980s Dumas’ work was exhibited in various institutions outside the Netherlands, presented with her contemporaries under the group label Dutch Artists. This included works displayed at Konsthallen, Gothenburg, Bienal de São Paulo and at the Tate Gallery, London. In 1988 Ulrich Bischoff invited Dumas to present her first solo museum exhibition abroad, at the Kunsthalle zu Kiel. In 1989 her solo exhibition The Question of Human Pink, curated by Ulrich Loock, opened at Kunsthalle Bern.
In the early 1990s Dumas worked intensively with clients and therapists for several years on the commissioned work for the psychiatric centre Het Hooghuys. In 1992, Miss Interpreted, her first extensive show in the Netherlands, opened at the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven before it toured Europe and the US. In 1994 Tilton Gallery presented Dumas’ first New York solo show. The following year Malmö Konsthall and Castello di Rivoli, Turin, presented The Particularity of Being Human, which paired works by Francis Bacon with that of Dumas. This was the same year Dumas represented the Netherlands in the Dutch pavillion at the Biennale di Venezia, with Marijke van Warmerdam and Maria Roosen.
In 2011 the Centre Pompidou, Paris, presented a retrospective of drawings by Dumas. Also that year, Dumas received the Rolf Schock Prize in Stockholm. As part of this award Moderna Museet presented an exhibition of her works. In 2012 the artist was awarded the Johannes Vermeer Award. Between 2014 – 2015, the retrospective The Image as Burden was shown at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Tate Modern, London, and the Beyeler Foundation, Basel. In 2015, An Appetite for Painting: Contemporary Painting, 2000 – 2015, opened at the National Museum in Oslo.
In 2021, Dumas was invited by Musée d’Orsay, Paris, for a solo exhibition of her work for Le Spleen de Paris on Baudelaire’s 200th celebration year of birth. This year open-end, a solo exhibition opened at Palazzo Grassi – Collection Pinault in Venice, Italy.
[Adapted and expanded biography from: Marlene Dumas, Trine Otte Bak Nielsen. Omega’s Eyes. Marlene Dumas on Edvard Munch, guest star René Daniëls. Oslo: Munch Museum, 2018]
Abraham Kritzman’s practice spans painting, printmaking, sculpture and installation art. After studying at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, Jerusalem, he completed his master’s degree in Painting at the Royal College of Art, London in 2014. He lives between Israel and London and is currently a Tutor at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design.
Kritzman’s multidisciplinary work molds the space and time of symbols and objects. Often influenced by mythical narratives and timeless human imagery, Kritzman’s technique removes the original references from his creations, forming unexpected trajectories and offering new meanings.
Kritzman is the recipient of several awards and scholarships and has exhibited throughout Europe and Israel. His artworks exist in major foundations and institutions such as the Clore Duffield Foundation, London, and the Tel Aviv Museum of Art and Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art. The artist was awarded The Minister of Culture Prize for Emerging Artists, The Hermann Struck Prize for printmaking, the Clore-Bezalel Scholarship for MA at the Royal College of Art, The Aileen Cooper Prize, The Excellence Award for Achievements from Bezalel Department of Fine Art and The History and Theory Excellence Award from Bezalel Academy.
Earlier this year Abraham Kritzman’s Sheshet series of six sculptures were acquired by the Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art, Israel.
Violeta Paez Armando is an artist from Córdoba, Argentina, who currently lives and works in Amsterdam. Her practice combines sculpture, writing, and theory. Paez’s work critically engages with sci-fi narratives, and ideas of monstrosity informed by queer and decolonial discourses, to explores questions around permeability and malleability. She has recently graduated from the Sandberg Instituut in Amsterdam and has gone on to participate in several residencies and exhibitions.
In 2021, PuntWG, Amsterdam, Netherlands, presented Violeta Paez Armando: Love Revealed, or How to Keep All This Warmth at Bay, the culmination of a 3-month residency at airWG supported by the Mondriaan Fonds. Event-based work has been presented at P////AKT in the context of a solo exhibition by June Crespo, at De Appel, and the Sandberg final exhibition at Het Hem, Zaandam.
Ulay, born Frank Uwe Laysiepen was a Pioneer of Polaroid photography and performance and body art. Formally trained as a photographer, Ulay was a consultant for Polaroid between 1968–1971.
From 1976 to 1988, Ulay collaborated with former partner Marina Abramović. Their performances such as Relation Works and The Lovers: The Great Wall Walk, as well as others made them icons of performance art. After breaking up with Abramović, Ulay focused on photography, exploring the medium and its boundaries to address the position of those marginalised in contemporary society and re-examining the issues surrounding nationalism.
Following four decades of living and working in Amsterdam, several long-term artistic projects in India, Australia and China, and a professorship of Performance and New Media Art at the Staatliche Hochschule für Gestaltung in Karlsruhe, Ulay spent the last ten years of his life in Ljubljana, in his native Slovenia, where he passed away in 2020.
Ulay has participated in numerous international exhibitions since the late 1970s. Recent solo exhibitions include the Ulay: The Great Journey, Spurs Gallery, Beijing; retrospective exhibition ULAY WAS HERE, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Ulay: Life-Sized, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, and Ulay: Polaroids, Nederlands Fotomuseum, Rotterdam.
Ulay’s work, as well as his collaborative work with Marina Abramović, is featured in collections of major institutions worldwide, including the Stedelijk Museum, Tate, Centre Pompidou, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) and The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA).
In her work, Müge Yilmaz examines the paradoxes around the concept of protection, focusing on community, survival, and faith. Through her preferred mediums of performance, photographs, and installations she creates immersive pieces inspired by feminist science-fiction. Yilmaz uses image and performance to present the audience with possible futures. By keeping protection as a common them, her research explore questions of preservation and scarcity.
Yilmaz’ work has been exhibited extensively in the Netherlands, including at The Hague. As well as this, her work has been shown in Germany, Brussels, in Turkey at the 16th Istanbul Biennale and in China at 11th Shanghai Biennale. Her work is currently on show at 59th Venice Biennale as part of the Bookshop Pavilion Stirling. Yilmaz’ work is part of the group exhibition Tenminste Houdbaar Tot at Museum Arnham, until January 2023.
During Art Rotterdam, A Garden of Coincidences (2020) by Yilmaz, was put on public display in the city.
Marine Lover: Snakes and Metal (22nd October – 19th November 2022) will open with a Private View on Saturday, 22nd October, 2022, at Bradwolff Projects, Oetewalerstraat 73, 1093 ME Amsterdam, Netherlands, in the presence of some of the artists. Some artists will be available for interviews. The exhibition will be open Thursday –Saturday, 1 – 5pm, or by appointment.
