+ Days + Nights

We are also delighted to announce that this exhibition will be part of London Gallery Weekend 2025 edition (6th – 8th June). As part of this, Elizabeth Xi Bauer will present a panel discussion at the Exmouth Market space in June 2025, open to the public.

Abraham Kritzman’s multidisciplinary practice centres on an immersive language expressed through painting, sculpture, and printmaking. Inspired by journeys, his work merges mythical narratives, human imagery, architecture, and landscape to create layered and dynamic compositions Kritzman’s works embody a dance of gestures and delicate details that bridge historical and contemporary themes.

For this upcoming exhibition, Abraham Kritzman, has created two new series. The first comprises ten aluminium works cast at the South London-based Foundry Make Touch, run by artist Katrin Hanusch. These double-sided reliefs have undulating images embedded into their front sides. These images are derived from watercolour drawings Kritzman created whilst participating in a residency in Greece in 2023; they are his exploration of notions surrounding love and relationships. This series of works will be installed so that they all hang from the gallery ceiling in the centre of the space, revealing both sides of the works. Moreover, the pictorial arrangement on the reverse of these works comes together once all are installed next to one another, resulting in one large, abstracted image of a couple kissing.

+ Days + Nights will feature large wooden structures with black carved panels on both sides. Each panel displays a flowing, carved image that seamlessly comes together at the edges and expands back at the centre, creating an intricate, abstract design. The flowing engravings evoke a sense of fluidity, with shapes that form and dissolve. Hanging on these wooden panels are delicate ceramic works that introduce a fragmented quality to the display. These ceramic pieces feature small scenes in green and smoky black, drawn onto the clay using metals such as copper, iron, and chrome. When fired at high temperatures, the metals create a variety of colours and effects, further enhancing the overall dynamic of the artwork.

Philippe Van Snick employed a rigorous yet poetic visual language, using binary logic, mathematical structures, and rhythms in nature to explore perception, time, and space. At the core of his oeuvre was a decimal system (0–9) paired with a distinctive ten-colour palette—red, yellow, blue, orange, violet, green, white, black, gold, and silver—through which he systematically examined the dualities of day and night, presence and absence, stability and instability.

At first, this aesthetic ‘alphabet’ might appear restricted and formal, given its self-imposed nature. However, Van Snick’s works can be considered like a spiral, unfolding and transcending beyond one-dimensional meanings, a form of experimentation akin to the arbitrary nature of life.

Van Snick’s system developed a mode of creativity that continuously renewed, much like the world he attempted to make sense of. This dynamic approach created a visual language that connected everyday experiences with universal concerns.

This upcoming exhibition highlights key works spanning decades of his career, including works from the Dix Jours / Dix Nuits series (1985), pieces that are considered the Genises of his rhythmic study of colour and time, Allies 1 and Allies 2 (2012), diptychs that explore subtle shifts in perception; and Symmetrische – Asymmetrische reeks op paneel (groen) (1988), a large-scale meditation on the symmetric and asymmetric.

For Van Snick, art was a vehicle to explore the intrinsic instability of systems: chance eclipses order and emotions outweigh rationality.

+ Days + Nights at Elizabeth Xi Bauer is the first time Philippe Van Snick’s work has been exhibited in London since the group exhibitions Frequent Long Walks – A Proposition by Christopher Green at Hannah Barry Gallery in 2016 and The Gap: Selected Abstract Art from Belgium, a group exhibition at Parasol Unit, in 2015, curated by Luc Tuymans.

In their work, Kritzman and Van Snick make it their mission to explore and express the complex interplay between their life experiences and unique artistic languages. Rather than focusing on a singular investigation, these languages are interwoven throughout their works, forming a continuous thread that evolves over time.

By rejecting rigid structures and predefined narratives, both artists embrace the tension between their artistic vocabularies and the fluid nature of perception. They present a framework—a starting point— that is intentionally open-ended, allowing for multiple interpretations. The viewer is invited to witness a dialogue between two dynamic systems of meaning, constantly shifting with time, space, and context. This exhibition at Elizabeth Xi Bauer provides a new context for this ongoing exploration, examining how contemporary abstraction can expand the possibilities of meaning and association. Far from isolating or rejecting, it encourages a post-symbolist approach that invites fluid interpretation and connection.

Ultimately, both artists challenge viewers to reconsider unseen patterns that shape their worlds and the viewer’s experiences —not as fixed, rigid systems but as fluid, ever-evolving structures that invite constant reexamination.

+ Days + Nights will run from 11th April – 8th June 2025, at Elizabeth Xi Bauer’s Exmouth Market location, open Wednesday through to Saturday, 12 – 6 pm or by appointment. A Private View will be held on 10th April 2025, 6 – 8 pm.

This exhibition will be part of London Gallery Weekend 2025 edition (6th – 8th June). As part of this, Elizabeth Xi Bauer will present a panel discussion at the Exmouth Market space in June 2025, open to the public.

This exhibition has been conceived courtesy of the Philippe Van Snick Estate and Martins & Montero.