menu
  • NL
  • EN
    • Exhibitions — Mixed Media

    Topiary Stories | Iris Van Dongen

    Date:
    8 September up to 14 October 2023
    Location:
    →

    Amsterdam
    Open:
    Admission
    Free admission

    ‘Topiary’ Llterally Means Keeping Nature In Check. For Iris Van Dongen, Who Currently Lives In Rural Denmark, This Comes Back Daily. Even In Her Drawings, Nature Has Taken On A Greater Role. From Wild And Pristine To Manufactured And Cultivated. It Gives A New Dimension To Her Portraits And It Is Beautiful To See How They Blend Together With A Similar Passion.

    Related events

    Exhibitions — Ceramics, Mixed Media, Painting, Photography, Sculpture, Video | Film, Work on paper

    Interrupted Whispers | Group Show

    The eye glides along, literally from one statue to the next, until it remains still at the back of a bronze sculpture. This is a statue of a woman who wears a long, pleated head covering and, with her back facing the camera, looks out at the immense bluish glass wall of a modern office tower. We circulate throughout the Botanique, the Botanical Gardens of Brussels, created in the nineteenth century. Here Emma van der Put made video recordings of the sculptures that are still standing in the botanical garden today. In her video work Project Panorama, 2025, they are the protagonists who, from their anchored position in history, witness the city’s rapid development. With their tranquil drama the group of statues contrasts with an environment full of anonymous, geometrically designed architectural giants. The park is a time capsule, as it were, but what information does it contain? And what does it say about us, as humanity? Past, present and future seem to be in suspended animation here. The work of Emma van der Put is suffused with suggestiveness. The human figure in all its physicality is portrayed in her Project Panorama as an autonomous presentation, a body both monumental and fragile. On the basis of that ambiguity, the sculptures reach out to the world. But will the body hold up?

    1 Nov up to 10 Jan — tegenboschvanvreden