andriesse – eyck presents the exhibition Sea Legs for the opening of the new gallery season. The official opening of the exhibition takes place during the Opening of the Season weekend, on Friday 5 September (17:00 — 20:00).
The exhibition brings together works from various stages of Antonietta Peeters’ practice. From early crochet works to her characteristic landscape-oriented paintings and recent works in which the act of painting is the central motif.
Crocheted triangles rise up like fierce sails. They are brightly coloured and both coarse and delicate in texture. They interrupt the space, but together they also create a new pattern, an order of their own. The holes let light and air pass through, so the wind will never set these sails in motion. In some parts, flowers are clearly distinguishable, while in others the work is more abstract, like a quilt in which different elements come together. Antonietta Peeters used yarn and a crochet hook, flexible materials that are easy to carry, allowing her to work anywhere.
Research into movement and perspective is also reflected in her paintings of landscapes and lakes, often divided into a grid, but sometimes so abstracted that only planes remain. Sky, land and water merge and interrupt each other; what we see is not always clear, but precisely because of this, the viewer keeps trying to unravel the space.
In later work, the motif recedes further into the background. The paintings are concrete and object-like, no longer suggesting another reality. Peeters stitches the canvas and then paints over it in many layers of paint, creating delicate colours that are thin and translucent. The act of making takes precedence, yet the works still explore space. Like the crochet pieces, the canvas becomes a space in itself, a relationship between presence and absence, silence and acceleration, in which the viewer becomes increasingly lost.
Antonietta Peeters (NL, 1967) was a resident at De Ateliers in Amsterdam. Her work has been exhibited at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Van Abbemuseum Eindhoven, Bonnefantenmuseum Maastricht, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen Rotterdam, Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, Stedelijk Museum Schiedam, Club Solo, Breda and Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf, among others. Her work is included in the collections of, among others, the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht, the Caldic Collection, AKZO Nobel Art Foundation and the RABO Art Collection.
