online catalogue

28.03 - 05.05 2024
Opening
Thursday March 28th from 5 - 8 pm

No Man’s Art Gallery is honoured to present ANTSONG, Maxim Santalov’s third solo exhibition with the gallery. Extending to both gallery spaces, ANTSONG shows the artist’s large body of intricately composed geometrical drawings that form a narrative of a rhythmic trail, moving through the planetary mesocosms of Santalov’s worlds. He reconstructs childlike reveries of the past, searching for their elements and atmospheres in the future. 

“My work is my own insectarium, filled with vanishing species and unidentifiable creatures,” Santalov poses. Through his signature technique, he highlights the juxtaposition of the modern and the rural, the adult and the childlike, the harsh and the soft - while creating a need for motion, for a search and a pathway, amongst wandering insects, the dripping waters, falling stars and the explosive fires. 

Prickling past the surface of his cultural memory, Santalov builds pheromonal bridges ‒ just as those blossomed by his ant-characters ‒ to connect various themes emerging within the landscape of Russian art history to his unique integration of realism and surrealism. Touching the array of values and principles embedded in movements such as Constructivism and Suprematism, as well as his own Ävangraphics. Santalov masters the rigidity of minimal shapes and their carved-out dimensionality along with a contrasting intensity and vibrancy of his colour palette. In his self-taught practice, the artist moves across from concealment directly into mapping, marking, and reeking storytelling. “At first glance, it may seem as if my drawings are devoid of air, but look more closely. The work is marked with scratches and ripples which impose shape and texture. Space binds together the elements of composition,” Santalov explains. 

As symbols of symbiotic relationships, the techniques used by the artist are left within their own capsules of existence, communicating with each other and the viewer as the trails left behind. The yellow acrylic under the layers of wax crayon and pencil markings remain visible, tying the echoing niches of Santalov’s drawing environment to his methodology. As such, the artist simultaneously enchants with an arthropodic cosmos and leaves space for narratives of our own fabrication, memory, and emotion.

The exhibition extends to both gallery locations: Willem de Zwijgerlaan 327 and Bos en Lommerweg 88 and runs until May 5th 2024. For more information or inquiries please contact info@nomansart.com

Photos Tommy Smits

online catalogue

Nadie BorGgreve | Julia Dahee hong | Afra Eisma
Alejandra LÓpez Martínez | Marnix van Uum

22.11 - 23.12 2023

Opening
Wednesday November 22nd from 4 - 6 pm
Location: NMAG Kiosk, Willem de Zwijgerlaan, 327, Amsterdam

In the midst of winter’s solace, and the need for i-love-you’s, No Man’s Art Gallery presents the group exhibition suckle and squeeze. This friendship, this friendly-ship, that vessel in which I camouflage. Their arms warm to hold me, boundaries bound anew as my body is boarded. I’m melted into a confusing mixture; home. Outside it’s no different, in a circle – our arms one. ‘Do not remove your lovely leopard spots’, she said. We squeezed milk in each other's mouth as they came out.

online catalogue

Anna Vosse Carpaij | Lotus Rosalina Hebbing
Matei Dragomir | Obbe van der Weide
Toran Macrae Wolstencroft

22.11 - 23.12 2023

Opening
Wednesday November 22nd from 4 - 6 pm
Location: NMAG, Bos en Lommerweg, 88, Amsterdam

jiuba art space presents Wormhole Echoes. In Roman mythology, Janus, the god with two heads, embodies the dual nature of holding conflicting ideas. A symbol of beginnings and endings, doorways, openings and time; the plurality of openings highlighting the freedom of choice. Wormhole Echoes is an exploration beyond the confines of our chosen perspectives, echoing duality and it inspires us to seek a deeper understanding of the universe and our place within it.

jiuba art space is an is an offshoot of No Man’s Art Gallery, providing a space for spontaneous, joyful and experimental programming on an informal basis with young and emerging artists. As a mostly online space, jiuba will function as an accessible art marketplace that will have occasional physical expressions such as this show.

Online Catalogue

Listen back to the artist talk with artist Sam Samiee and director/curator Lih-Lan Wong
NMAG Storage Sessions I

08.09 - 29.10. 2023

No Man’s Art Gallery proudly presents When Hell Breaks Loose I’ll Tell You Your Legs Were Always On My Mind the first solo exhibition by Sam Samiee at the gallery. Across his multifaceted career as a painter, essayist and psychoanalyst in-training, this exhibition specifically highlights the artist’s sixteen-year engagement in drawing, emphasising the prioritisation of queer aesthetics throughout vulnerabilities and crises.

The rooms of No Man’s Art Gallery show over two-hundred rarely exhibited drawings - spanning from 2008 - 2023 - that are thematically divided into landscape and flora, imaginative scenes, figuration and still life. The title of the exhibition alludes to an overarching theme throughout the artist's artistic and research-based endeavours: voicing a poetic eroticism or playfulness in the light of crises.

Samiee refers to his practice as post-cinematic. Central to his practice are installations embedded within the architecture of the exhibition space. The way they are edited relate to the process of playing with semantics. An example of this is seen in relation to his models, friends and conversants, revealing a deep connection of shared moments and dialogue that influenced sensual, political and relational elements guided by the artist's long involvement in psychoanalytic settings and thinking.

While Samiee separates and engages independently with drawing as a rationalist enterprise of measuring and recording the real world, his other endeavour, poetry and deconstruction of language, intertwines as subject matter of the drawings. Drawing and visual arts are put to work to materialise notions, concepts and abstract constellations that have seemingly lost their touch with materiality. Finding life-driven forces within situations that are deadening; finding a playfulness at the moment of drawing still life, machines and objects of everyday life; envisioning familiar and unfamiliar landscapes of mountains and lowlands, and collecting thoughts and ideas for a future view. Through the unique installation of the drawing archive, new connections appear between nodal points of the works.

His drawings breathe life into verses from poetry, figures from world mythology, and his own lines, avoiding mere literary illustration. An abstract scene of a lover's embrace is interlaced with a written fragment of Mohammad Reza Sharjarian's "A Lover's Plight," a Persian song calling on lovers to pour their hearts into their cups like tulips blushing. Samiee's recurring exploration of the connection between a verse of poetry and drawing or painting such as in his use of the promethean motif, leads to fresh interpretations and interconnectedness among these semantic points.

Amid over two hundred drawings we find scenes of mourning, death, the crucifixion and Iran-Iraq war tragedies yet always with the presence of the sanctuary that is beauty. The drawings invite access to the subtext of Samiee’s oeuvre, as amongst the chaos it is the beautiful thighs, chests, the Mountains Zagros Ranges and the blossoming orchid branch that offer solace.

Seen from a chronological point of view, and if compared with the exhibiting trajectory of the artist, one is able to observe how Samiee challenges literary hegemony within his culture and others by infusing architecture, physicality, color, and line into a playful discourse. His work exposes and puts on trial ideologies that regulate bodies, allowing both himself and viewers to confront the material reality of his subjects. In his more recent drawings, an embrace of the decorative and the poetic become increasingly visible.

When Hell Breaks Loose I'll Tell You Your Legs Were Always On My Mind reveals a decade of the backstage of the artist practice, research, obsessions, tests and notes which hold together a wide range of emotions, fantasies, and ideas that Samiee has relied on or will return to in the future of his ongoing explorations.

The opening is followed by NMAG’s 5 Year Anniversary Party from 9pm onwards. Join the celebration at Bos & Lommerweg 88 with cocktails and music late into the night.

Public Programme:
Artist Talk | Sam Samiee in conversation with Lih-Lan Wong
When: Thursday October 26th 2023
Time: 6pm - 8pm
Location: NMAG & de bar, Bos en Lommerweg 88-90, Amsterdam

Painter, essayist and psychoanalyst in training Sam Samiee will give an artist talk in conversation with director and curator Lih-Lan Wong.

RSVP to Artist Talk (free admission)

Sam Samiee (b. 1988, IR) is a painter, essayist and psychoanalyst in training based in Amsterdam, Berlin and Tehran. He is a winner of the Royal Award for Painting in 2016 and Wolvecamp Prize in 2018 and finished the Rijksakademie residency in 2015 and ArtEZ University of Arts and Design in 2013, where he was a lecturer of painting until 2020. Samiee synthesises his heavy research on art history, Persian poetry and psychoanalytic theories into a studio practice that employs painting in multiple registers. The characteristic of his installations as extended paintings is the break from the tradition of flat painting and a return to the original question of how artists can represent the three-dimensional world in the space of painting as a metaphor for a set of ideas. He employs a range of painterly attitudes from oil paintings to iPad paintings, figuration, abstraction, the break of the rectangular frame and usage of text among other methods. Recently Samiee’s work focuses on a period of painting that parted ways from avant-garde, with the emphasis on decorative modes of work, of artists such as Matisse and Bonnard.

Graphic Design: Peter van den Hoogen (Coup)

Online Catalogue

Anico mostert | Anna van der Ploeg | Cihad Caner | Donglai Meng | Esther van der Heijden & Nosh neneh | kelvin Dijk | Merijn KaVelaars | Safira Taylor | Sam Samiee | Sisse Holst Pedersen | Tommy Smits

Atari
A group exhibition by jiuba art space, hosted at No Man’s Art Gallery
Curated by Sophie Huijbregts
21 July - 27 August 2023

No Man’s Art Gallery is proud to present Atari, a group exhibition that brings together 12 artists whose work inhabits a state of atari: a moment suspended in time, in which the next move must be made. Atari invites us to visit a series of crossroads, touching on topics of interconnectedness and competition, precarity and growth.

In the ancient game of Go, the concept of atari refers to a situation in which a stone is left with only one remaining liberty, or one empty intersection adjacent to the stone. It occurs when a stone’s liberties are reduced to one, caused by the position of the opponent’s stones - meaning the player is faced with the imminent loss of their stone and territory. Therefore, their next move directly and consciously impacts the further path of the game. They can make several strategic decisions, such as defence, counterattack and sacrifice. By recognising atari and responding appropriately, players can either secure their stones' safety or capitalise on their opponent's position to gain an advantage in the game.

Being in a state of atari requires us to hold the weight of all possible paths forward in a single moment: it is a state of contemplation. This is beautifully illustrated in works such as those by Anico Mostert and Donglai Meng. They are meditations, showing us hope and fear and highlighting the multifaceted nature of the human response to risk. At the same time risk can be seen as a catalyst for change, as we can recognise in the works by Sisse Holst Pedersen and Esther van der Heijden. They fuse resilience with fragility, communicating on interconnectedness and growth.

Atari entails the imminent loss or potential gain of territory. This tension evokes a sense of vulnerability, speaking to the role of physical space in the construction of identity and ideas of belonging. In Studies in Cartography, Sam Samiee investigates the power structures at play in the seemingly neutral practice of mapping, drawing attention to the violence underlying this act of capture through imagemaking. It works to render places and peoples legible, defining sets of hierarchies and relationships through which authority can be exerted. If mapping defines territory to impose structures of power, the transgression of those boundaries can be seen as a threat to that same power. Cihad Caner delves further into the construction of the “other” in relation to processes of migration, illustrating how movement through territory puts pressure on ideas of the self. He focuses on water as a driving ecological and political force, as well as a space of flux and uncertainty. Flows of people give rise to anxieties around belonging, their mobility eroding false notions of permanence and stability. 

As the moment in which a path must be chosen, atari is also a state of suspension and uncertainty. Kelvin Dijk’s work grapples with the interplay between migration and identity on a personal level, addressing internal feelings of displacement. Through the exploration of (visual) culture and lore, he attempts to connect different localities and create new modes of cultural belonging. A similar act of anchoring oneself in the face of uncertainty can be found in Anna van der Ploeg’s abstractions of Cape Town’s “missing” posters. They are highly localised communications, as an anonymous author sends out a cry for help to those sharing an urban landscape. These strategies can be seen as acts of tracing, of rendering visible networks and connections across space and time. Similarly, Tommy Smits’ works are a testimony to one of many possible paths taken. They embody a series of uncertainties, a chain reaction of decisions made by chance, memorialising each one as fossils in stone.

If the situation at hand is dealt with strategically, atari represents the possibility for gain or growth. Living Monuments of the Deep, a collaborative project between Esther van der Heijden and Nosh Neneh, makes a case for applying such contemplation and awareness to our relationship with the natural world. The works seek to embody the vulnerability of endangered oceanic species, and invite us to cherish the vast interconnectedness of the world we inhabit. In a similar vein, Safira Taylor combines personal histories with fluid interpretations of the vulnerability, growth and interdependence which characterise many organic processes. This cyclical nature can be recognised in Merijn Kavelaar’s 4Flux, which revisits canvasses from past creative processes to fuel new artistic growth.

Atari marks the launch of jiuba art space, a new (online) space for experimentation and play. jiuba is an offshoot of No Man’s Art Gallery, providing a space for spontaneous, joyful and experimental programming on an informal basis with young and emerging artists. As a mostly online space, jiuba will function as an accessible art marketplace that will have occasional physical expressions such as this show.

Atari will be on show from July 22nd until August 27th. The exhibition extends across both gallery locations: No Man’s Art Gallery KIOSK (Willem de Zwijgerlaan 327), open Wednesday through Saturday, 12 - 5pm. No Man’s Art Gallery & de bar (Bos en Lommerweg 88): open daily, 12 - 5pm.

Programme:

Guided tour with curator Sophie Huijbregts and artists
Location: No Man’s Art Gallery KIOSK, Willem de Zwijgerlaan 327
When: Thursday, August 24th
Time: 6 - 10 PM

Online Catalogue

José Eduardo Barajas | Wendy Cabrera Rubio | Alejandro Galván | Alan Hernández | Alejandra España | Chavis Mármol |
Carlos Martínez González | Ileana Moreno |
RojoNegro (Noé Martínez Flores & María Sosa) |
Rodrigo Red Sandoval | María Sosa | María Vez

Las estrellas me iluminan al revés
June 2 - July 15 2023
Opening Friday June 2nd 4 - 7 PM at both gallery locations

No Man’s Art Gallery is honoured to participate in Amsterdam Art Week with the exhibition “Las estrellas me iluminan al revés”, featuring a diverse collection of works by emerging Mexican artists. The group show is an extension of the gallery’s tenth international pop-up gallery in Mexico City and opens June 2nd at both gallery locations in Amsterdam.

“Las estrellas me iluminan al revés,” includes works by José Eduardo Barajas, Wendy Cabrera Rubio, Alejandro Galván, Alan Hernández, Alejandra España, Chavis Mármol, Carlos Martínez González, Ileana Moreno, RojoNegro (Noé Martínez Flores & María Sosa), Rodrigo Red Sandoval, María Sosa and María Vez. 

“Las estrellas me iluminan al revés” invites twelve artists to explore the inevitability of spirituality as a strategy to cope with the darker forces of life. Each work attempts to touch the realms of duality, magic or healing; relating to itself while at the same time being charged by external sources that are of more obscure nature.

The exhibition title, roughly translated as “the stars shine on me backwards,” takes its inspiration from the largest painting in the show by Alejandro Galván. The painting references the lyrics of Alfredo Guttiérez's "El Solitario," a renowned cumbia song portraying the unfortunate life of a desolate drunkard, to whom misfortune has become a constant companion. His melancholic existence is felt as if the stars have illuminated him in reverse. Having given up on life, the man preserves a sense of pride by attributing his misfortune to a reversed starlu. 

All of the works in the exhibition carry a similar charge of an elusive dark energy, each time conjured by another force: ancestors, symbols, mythical gods, astronomy, rituals or witchcraft. They prolong the natural movement and oral histories of magic that tie the intricate Hispanic, Indigenous, and African cultures of Central America and beyond. 

“Las estrellas me iluminan al revés” opens on June 2nd at 4pm and runs until 16 July 2023 on both gallery locations: Willem de Zwijgerlaan 327 and Bos & Lommerweg 88, Amsterdam. 

Online Catalogue

Khosrow Hassanzadeh
Mina Keshavarz
Sanaz Sohrabi
Ramtin Zad

ONCE THERE WAS (N)ONE

Opening Tuesday 25 April 2023 from 5 - 8PM

25 April - 16 May 2023
Curated by Fereshte Moosavi

Amid times of ongoing cruelty, normalized violence, and never-ending war, this exhibition presents a number of artworks that counter the historical forgetfulness caused by such conflicts. Each artwork creates a monumental presence for the erased, oppressed, or marginalized beings and things. This is realized by combining the power of factual narratives with fictional tales that are founded on actual documentations, family archives as well as imaginary situations. The artworks include painting, drawing, sculpture, print, video and documentary by Khosrow Hassanzadeh, Mina Keshavarz, Sanaz Sohrabi and Ramtin Zad. 

The Art of Living in Danger (2020) is a documentary by Mina Keshavarz that revolves around a monologue that the artist has written to her grandmother, Nuri, who she’s never met. Pressured by the traditional marriage at a young age, Nuri commits suicide at the age of thirty-five when pregnant with her eighth child. Made on the fiftieth anniversary of Nuri’s death, this film is an act of remembrance and a homage to Keshavarz’s grandmother as one of the many women whose life is affected by domestic violence. In the meantime, by following a group of female lawyers and activists in their campaign for criminalisation of domestic violence, Keshavarz documents the ongoing fight for gender equality and for ending normalized violence in Iran. With a similar approach, Khosrow Hassanzadeh’s Faheshe (2001) is a series of silk screen prints portraying a number of women who were victims of a chain murders in the city of Mashahd, north east of Iran over twenty years ago. By employing police documentations to print large, colorful and repetitive portraits of these women, not only Hassanzadeh challenges the ‘distorted ideology behind the criminal’s fundamentalist motivation’, but also, he creates a monumental appearance for these women as an act of remembrance. 

These works are set against the backdrop of politically charged historical references that set a reminder of the bitterness of dominant states’ powers. Ramtin Zad’s series of paintings and drawings titled Last Ceremony (2018-2022) brings together a more dramatic and expressive presentation of the momentum of death, intertwined with political and fictional figures. His short video Smile Parade (2018) is an anti-monumental work in which he paints a clown portrait over every single face of the North-Koren and Russian armies while marching at an unknown special event. In continuation of questioning the long-established moral principles, counter-monuments are a way to reflect on the monuments’ message or lack thereof to reread history. Sanaz Sohrabi’s video art The Glory, the Human, and the Mother; a Cartography (2017) sets out on a journey to different locations of the former soviet union to search for three monuments that were demolished, altered or repurposed. Moving between the archival materials and documentations from the sites of the statuses we hear the artist's narration about the events that surround these monuments.   

Image: The Glory, the Human, and the Mother: a Cartography, 2017, (film still), Sanaz Sohrabi, Video with sound, 17:35 minutes

online catalogue

Press:
- Weekendtips van Mitchell Esajas: SPECTRUM by Jamal Nxedlana, Het Parool, 2023
- Elle Decoration, Mexico, 2024

SPECTRUM
Opening Saturday March 11 / 5 - 8 PM
11 March - 16 April 2023

Artist Talk with Jamal Nxedlana
Thursday April 6th / 6 - 8 PM
RSVP (free admission)

No Man’s Art Gallery is honoured to present SPECTRUM, the second solo exhibition by Jamal Nxedlana at the gallery. The exhibition showcases a new series of images that continues his exploration of topics such as race, masculinity, post-colonialism and consumer culture, with a particular focus on the representation of the black body in fashion photography. Nxedlana is a visual artist and cultural organizer who is recognized for establishing initiatives and projects that support the South African arts community, including Bubblegum Club, a digital platform and culture agency that promotes innovative work and emerging cultural workers.

His first solo exhibition at No Man's Art Gallery, AVATAR, celebrated the creativity of Johannesburg's cultural scene, using their work and personal style as statements of mystery and beauty. Nxedlana created a mythology in which new gods and spirits emerge from a moment in the city’s history (2016-2019) where Nxedlana felt in sync with his contemporaries. While his subsequent global exhibitions garnered attention, the lens through which his work was viewed failed to recognize its multifaceted nature. SPECTRUM examines black portraiture and the artist's path towards abstraction of the black body, presenting a complex series of photographs that resists any singular perspective on black identity.

In SPECTRUM, Nxedlana continues to refine a visual language that incorporates and reflects on objects that are ubiquitous to his context, such as the monobloc chair. It functions as a symbol in itself, but it also appears in dialogue with the artist, recognising the chair as contextually problematic; its provenance suggestive of the unsustainable relationship between the African continent and the rest of the world. “A dumping ground” for cheap products, plastic, clothes; what the world doesn’t seem to want or need anymore. Simultaneously, the omnipresence of the chair has caused it to become part of the visual culture of the artist. The chair reflects the multiplicity of meanings and values encountered along the route of limitlessness and abstraction. A contraction that turns one object into a mindful discussion on identity and questions a tangible encapsulation of the Black experience. “The chair is a way to speak to multiplicity”. 

Experimental manipulations with translucent perspex create a prism effect that further informs of the dimensionality and separational nature of the work.. The perspex reflects the shapes of the city of Johannesburg and further entangles the bodies that hold it up. The shape mimics some of the properties of the monobloc chair and enters a symbolic space that allows it to extract abstraction and expression from the deconstructed bodies and objects. The careful combination of these elements provides presented scenes with a wonderfully sharp sculptural quality. Overlapping, layered, and intangible, Nxedlana brings together different symbolic elements and plays with their potential in a way that results in an patchwork organism that can be at any point spotlighted and broken apart into limbs.

Location: NMAG KIOSK, Willem de Zwijgerlaan 327 and NMAG, Bos & Lommerweg 88 (this exhibition extends to both gallery locations)

Jamal Nxedlana (b. 1985, South Africa) is a visual artist and cultural organiser living and working in Johannesburg, South Africa. He is the founder of a number of independent organisations that support the South African arts community among which is Bubblegum Club, a digital platform and culture agency showcasing innovative new work and creating opportunities for emerging cultural workers. He is also a founding member of CUSS Group, a Johannesburg-based artist collective that has been exploring the hybrid culture of post-colonial South Africa over the past decade. As a solo artist, his practice addresses the portrayal of the black body in fashion photography while exploring themes of race, masculinity, post-colonialism and consumer culture. 

Jamal Nxedlana has exhibited in galleries, institutions and independent spaces internationally. Most recently, his images were featured in the collective shows The New Black Vanguard curated by Antwaun Sargent and Orlando curated by Tilda Swinton.

online catalogue

Lejano de todas partes
Opening Saturday September 3rd / 6PM - late
4 September - 16 October 2022

No Man’s Art Gallery is honoured to present Lejano de Todas Partes (far from everywhere), the first solo exhibition by Alejandro Galván (1990, MX). Lejano de Todas Partes follows an intensive residency period of the artist in Amsterdam. The gallery invited Galván to join the residency programme after a series of studio visits in Mexico City earlier this year.

 Alejandro Galván is a painter who lives and works in Nezahualcóyotl (Neza), one of the most populated and dense areas of Mexico City. Neza is part of the State of Mexico, an area that comprises several municipalities on the outskirts of the centre of Mexico's capital. It has a complex history of governmental neglect, violence and marginalisation and at the same time houses a proud community with a strong sense of togetherness, the warm home and heart of the working class. These dualities are visualised in the artist’s large scale paintings of watercolour, ink, gouache and charcoal on wooden panels. Rich pictorial scenes reference cityscapes that include pre-hispanic culture and Mexican mythology combined with Catholic imagery, manga inspired figures together with medieval bestiaries and newspaper coverage of disturbing scenes next to intimate portraits of the artist’s family, female figures important to him and his neighbours.

Each painting is honoured with a Quinametzin, an Aztec titan that appears as a beast or figure and symbolises a particular place, its energy and its people. In Coyotl (2022), it is the proud coyote with its piercing gaze surrounded by the white tops of the mountains of El Nevado de Toluca. Female members of the underground Neza-based punk band Los Congolones are depicted as strong and powerful contemporary Mexica (Aztec) warriors on the streets the artist took daily on his way to the subway station of Pantitlán. This terminus is an important junction of el barrio where large crowds cross paths. 

In Coyotl (2022) Galván evokes the pride of his home town, by visualising communal resistance and creativity despite unruly grounds. At the heart of the painting a young innocent girl is seated amongst bougainville flowers that have symbolic value in the Mexican feminist movement. The concrete hill that surrounds her is an accidental monument that once started as a communal dumping ground for dead animals. To block the stench of rotting flesh, the dumping ground was covered in concrete and a fertile land grew on the excess of organic material. The transitional power of death to creativity is emphasised by the presence of Mictlantecuhtli, god of death, gatekeeper of the underworld in ancient Tenochtitlan on which ruins today's subway station of Pantitlán is built. 

The intricate pencil drawings centre around the concept of the Quinceañera, a rite of passage celebrated amongst all social classes in Mexico and throughout Latin America dating back to pre-hispanic times. It marks a girl's 15th birthday, the transition from childhood to womanhood. El Sombras (2022) and Quinceañera (2022) are set in the infamous Iztapalapa. Only inhabited for half a century, the area has now grown into one of the most densely populated peripheral municipalities, claiming mountainous territory like parasites. The drawings both honour the quinceañera and emphasise the traditional gender roles that are imposed on a young woman in a society where machismo rules and womanhood is envisioned through the man’s gaze, either being objectified or labelled with the sole purpose of being a mother.

The diptych Las Estrellas Me Iluminan Al Reves (2022) builds on a passage from Bernardo Esquinca’s novel ‘Carne de Ataúd’, set in the largest dump of Neza: Bordo de Xochiaca. The dump is enclosed by shacks held together by discarded banners of political parties. It is a place the artist often visited for its soccer field, which is located right in its centre. A devil masked eagle, with black chicken feet as claws, a floating serpent’s head, standing on a trash belt. The transformation of the Mexican coat of arms is a metaphorical display of black magic, a reverted energy of sorts. Under the wings of the Quinametzin eagle the famous Alfredo Guttierez sings El Solitario about a drunk man that drinks to forget, hoping for a new beginning, feeling that in life the stars have illuminated him in reverse:

 Vivo tomando porque es el trago es pa’los machos
Un desamor me puede causar la muerte
Y si el mar se convirtiera en aguardiente
En el me ahogara para morirme borracho

The triptych Río de la Compañía Mateo 14:22-33 (2022) is set in a similar environment as Las Estrellas Me Iluminan Al Revés (2022). The river borders Neza, Chimalhuacan and San Lorenzo. None of the municipalities bordering the canal govern this area, which has made this no man’s land a place where animals, trash and bodies are dumped. In his childhood Galván crossed the bridge from Neza to Chimalhuacan every weekend to play with his cousins. The loving memories of his childhood are merged with the smell of trash and clouds of dust from unpaved roads. Only through reading the newspapers he learned to know its darker side. Río de la Compañía Mateo 14:22-33 (2022) shows a procession, towards what or whom is unknown, but the act itself demonstrates a sense of hope and belief. Taken from a biblical scene (Matthew 14:22-33) Galván honours the people of the area by letting them walk on water. Río de la Compañía Mateo 14:22-33 (2022) shows sacrality is everyday life, a miracle of the common people, a metaphorical image of human agency. 

The opening of Lejano de todas partes coincides with No Man’s Art Gallery’s 4 year anniversary party, the official afterparty of the opening of the cultural season. The exhibition extends to both gallery locations: NMAG Kiosk, Willem de Zwijgerlaan 327 and NMAG Bos en Lommerweg 88

Photos: Neeltje de Vries

Alejandro Galván (1990, MX) is a painter who lives and works in Nezahualcóyotl, the most populated and dense area of Mexico City. He graduated from La Esmeralda, Mexico City’s most prestigious art academy in Fine Arts in 2016. Galván won the Young Mexican Prize 2020 promoted by the UK Mexican Art Society in London, England.Recent exhibitions include “Diálogo abierto: San Carlos/La Esmeralda”, The National Center of Arts (CENART); the Vasconcelos Library: the Pablo Goebel Fine Arts Gallery; Ecatepec Contemporary Art Museum (MArCE); Salón ACME. Galván is currently part of the FONCA ́s Young Creators program.

WENDY CABRERA RUBIO | AFRA EISMA | ALAN HERNANDEZ
SAM SAMIEE | HEND SAMIR | Buhlebezwe siwani

online catalogue

Graphic design: Cengiz Mengüç

As part of Amsterdam Art Weekend, No Man’s Art Gallery is thrilled to present Queen’s Substance a group show that includes the works of Afra Eisma (NL), Alan Hernandez (MX), Hend Samir (EG), Buhlebezwe Siwani (SA), Sam Samiee (IR) and Wendy Cabrera Rubio (MX).

In a beehive, the carefully balanced power dynamics depend on a single substance, exerted by the Queen Bee. This Queen’s Substance is licked from her body by her worker bees, who in their turn pass it along to the rest of the hive. As the Queen ages the substance is spread too thinly. Steadily and inevitably her society crumbles….

Opening: Thursday May 12th
Time: 5 - 9PM
Location: No Man’s Art Gallery KIOSK, Willem de Zwijgerlaan 327
13 May - 25 June 2022

Photos: Neeltje de Vries

Angelina Nonaj | Bo Deurloo | Esther van der Heijden | Kelvin Dijk | Mila de Graaf | Olivia de Ruijter | Paula Hernandez Mollison | Pum van de Koppel

open: source space takes over NMAG KIOSK for a pop-up show of friends that join forces in creating an exhibition, in search for a more democratic manner of representation within the field of arts. Creating a landscape of relational elements that bind each other together. With focus on communal space as leading factor.

Alongside the exhibition, the program exists out of live performance, music and a custom made menu by close friends.

Friday 22nd of April opening 5 - 10PM

Saturday 23rd of April dining
Book dinner via DM on Instagram of open:source space: @o.s.space. Max. 24 spots available

Sunday 24rd of April finissage 6 - 10PM

*open:source space will be held at NMAG KIOSK, Willem de Zwijgerlaan 327

06.02 - 27.03 2022

No Man’s Art Gallery is honored to present Impilo inegama, the second solo exhibition of Buhlebezwe Siwani (1987, ZA) at the gallery.

In Impilo inegama (loosely translated: Life has a name), Siwani addresses how Black motherhood is not viewed in a tender manner as one would view the process of becoming a mother, primarily because Black women’s bodies and fertility have not always belonged to themselves.

“When we hold conversations on and about slavery, we are focused on the bodies that make a voyage, rarely do these conversations touch on women who were kept as slaves whose sole purpose was to bear children who could work as slaves themselves.” (Siwani) A new series of soap paintings reflects on the experience of motherhood for these enslaved mothers and the voyage of the foetus within the mother’s body. Their titles Mdlezana translated from isiXhosa mean new mother, as this will be the only phase of motherhood these mothers get to experience before their babies are taken away from them.

In the video Ulishiyele bani ibele (2022), directly translated from isiZulu meaning “who did you leave the breast for?” We see the artist, herself carrying a child, performing repetitive rhythmic movements. Her voice recites the poem The Slave Mother (1854) by Francis Ellen Watkins Harper:

He is not hers, although she bore

   For him a mother’s pains;

He is not hers, although her blood

   Is coursing through his veins!

In both Ulishiyele bani ibele and Mdlezana we witness the unbearable loss; - the loss of a child, of self, of motherhood, of one’s body, but Siwani also shows us an incredible strength. A vigorous force that is materialised in ceramic sculptures. In Umdali and OoMama abadala the artist honours the creator, the life giver. This strength carried by not one but a group of women; a cycle of ceramics is placed close to the ground, rooted to earth. The hand of Siwani has left behind its traces, suggestions of mark making, taking ownership over one’s own body, one’s own womanhood and one’s own fertility.

Press: “De bittere smaak van zwart moederschap” Lucette ter Borg in NRC Newspaper, March 2022

Opening hours:
Wednesday, Thursday and Friday : 12.00 - 17.00h or by appointment (call 06-3755 0132). This exhibition extends to both gallery locations in Amsterdam: Bos en Lommerweg 88-90 (mezzanine) and Willem de Zwijgerlaan 327.

Photos: Neeltje de Vries

Buhlebezwe Siwani is a visual artist working predominantly in performance and installation. Siwani completed her BAFA(Hons) at the Wits School of Arts in Johannesburg in 2011 and her MFA at the Michealis School of Fine Arts in 2015. Siwani’s work interrogates the patriarchal framing of the black female body and black female experience within the South African context. Siwani’s art practice is strongly correlated with her practice as iSangoma, a spiritual healer that works within the space of the dead and the living.

Siwani was awarded the Standard Bank Young Artist Award in 2021 and nominated for the Theodora Niemeijer Prize in the same year. Past exhibitions include Sonsbeek 20-24, Arnhem, El Espacio 23, Miami, USA; Materiality, Iziko National Gallery, Cape Town, SA; Being There, Foundation Louis Vuitton, Paris, FR; Curitiba Biennial 2019, BR; Tell Freedom, Kunsthal KAdE, Amersfoort, NL; Documenta 14, Athens, GR, Kassel, DE; Africa Raccontare un Mondo, PAC Museum, Milan, IT; Deep Memory, Kalmar Art Museum, Kalmar, SE; Busuku benzolo, Labor Zero Labor, Triangle Arts, Marseilles, FR; Reparations, Theater Spektakel, Zurich, CH.

Afra Eisma | Abel Hartooni | Anastasia Kiseleva | Lena Kuzmich
Xavier Robles de Medina | Marijke Vasey

online catalogue

“Come with me” it whispers, oozing nectar across the brim of each bright green leaf. 

In the holy woods of Stimuli they celebrate. Decorum, loose ends, abundance and decay. In disparate togetherness. In continuous metamorphosis. They wake up in a dream and enter a space of transgression

No Man’s Art Gallery is honored to present DIONYSIA, a group show that inaugurates the opening of the gallery’s second location in Amsterdam, Bos & Lommer. No Man’s Art Gallery KIOSK is located on the Willem de Zwijgerlaan 327. DIONYSIA will be on show at both locations.
Exhibition runs from 12 November - 19 December 2021

Press:
“Nieuwe Locatie No Man’s Art Gallery oogt als een theatrale etalage”, Edo Dijksterhuis, Het Parool

Photos: Sonia Mangiapane

online catalogue

4 September - 7 November 2021

No Man’s Art Gallery is honored to present TWISTER, Mia Chaplin’s second solo exhibition at the gallery. The works are all created in Amsterdam where she has been working as NMAG Artist in Residence over the past summer month. 

TWISTER enters a body of work that oscillates between the abstract and figurative in which Chaplin explores the crooked and imperfect nature of intimate relationships. In rich impasto oil paintings and sculptures, with the immediacy of prominent brush strokes and expressive color palettes, she searches for the vivid tension between the soft and the violent, the familiar and the estranged. When it comes to passionate love, danger always lurks. 

Endless kissing scenes of young love, the silent devastation after a perfect storm, an abstracted scene of two fighting dogs frozen in a deadly battle painted in fleshy pinks, reds in blues. Saliva exchanges in fights and embraces. We see bodies intertwined, wrapped, curled inwards in scenes that hint at the sensual and emotional richness of the classical baroque paintings of Rubens. Are we witnessing an act of intimacy or one of fending off? 

It is the ambiguity between the works that Chaplin carefully highlights; by  juxtaposing this diverse selection Chaplin makes us second guess what we see: “It's both beauty and destruction; the one who is there to love and protect also is the one that violently hurts and betrays. This body of work in general is an attempt to anxiously grapple for some kind of control. It reflects the desire to trust, to be safe and vulnerable alongside the fear of being betrayed, deceived and misled.” (Chaplin)

Mia Chaplin (b.1990 South Africa) is a South African artist based in Cape Town. Her work is situated between painting and sculpture, with her impasto oil paintings and painted papier-mâché/plaster of Paris sculptures forming the basis of her practice. Chaplin uses materiality, colour, texture and visual motifs symbolically to address themes of identity, femininity and the body.

online catalogue

19 June - 19 August 2021

NMAG is honored to present “Everything is better when I’m with me” the second solo exhibition by Marilyn Sonneveld (1990, NL) at the gallery. Sonneveld will show a new series of oil paintings and glass objects made in the past year.

“Everything is better when I’m with me” conveys a personal narrative, one that takes us inwards, in which Sonneveld explores the vulnerabilities and insecurities of herself and her artist-hood.  The year of self isolation made her studio her center and pushed Sonneveld to explore her own limits and focus solely on her autonomous practice. In the paintings we see genderless and faceless figures taking on introverted and intimate postures. They are alone but not lonely. “The paintings touch upon a sense of desire, gut feeling and fantasies that one carries within, but is not always in touch with. To me they represent a journey of self acceptance, in my autonomous practice, in my ability to dive into painting even with the self doubt. Once you find that inner connection through intimacy, in the broadest sense of the word - everything gets better.” (Sonneveld)

In the postures we recognize a touch of the toe while leaning backwards, wrapping one’s body with arms and legs, sitting cross-legged and face down, fiddling with hands; all of them carry with them an emotion, a time and place. Figures in glass, zooming in and taking out, playing with organic shapes, brought to life by Sonneveld’s vivid use of colour.  “The figures might be introvert but the colors counter with lots of expression and presence. The colors allow me to be totally free while painting, to work in the moment and think of nothing, as nothing else exist.” (Sonneveld) This enjoyment; the loss of time, insecurity, self doubt or better said: the inevitable presence of those feelings but the enjoyment despite them might be exactly what  “Everything is better when I’m with me” wants to share with us.

Everything is better when I’m with me” will be on show from June 19th till 22nd of August 2021. For more information, please contact info@nomansart.com
This exhibition is kindly made possible by AFK

ONLine catalogue 

14 December 2019 - 16 February 2020

No Man’s Art Gallery is honored to present when cotton catches fire, the first solo exhibition by Arash Fakhim (1987). Rather than being merely a collection of objects, when cotton catches fire ought to be regarded as an artist’s mind map, showing the transferal features of objects in relation to the artist and each other. The title is inspired by the theory of object-object relations formulated by philosopher Graham Harman. According to Graham, things have a depth to their being that is never fully revealed or exhausted in their dealings with other things (or human beings).* Fakhim questions the naturalness with which we characterise objects being aspects such as color, usability and smell etc. He plays with our perception of what an object is by mashing it up, changing its attributes and displacing it:

“I create new dialogues by approaching things differently than what they at first sight communicate. By misplacing and abusing them, I try to get the thingness out of things, for example taking the bagness out of bags. In this way I question the function of a thing through its substance-specificity” 

For his new Pardeh series (2019) it was the Dutch suburban streetscape that caught the artist’s eye. There, in front of lace curtains, miniature Buddhas, plastic ornaments and decorative stickers adorn the windowsills of Dutch houses, a visual language that so effortlessly put all that he had been doing in reverse. These paintings are based on the shimmering projection of objects and their reflection in the window and onto the curtain. Not making any distinction towards the spatial, the flat or the material but rather creating an image wherein these aspects collide.

when cotton catches fire shows the clash of elements stacked on top of each other and compressed into a mash which Fakhim often describes as a “broodje kapsalon”**. Fakhim shows us the perspective of an outsider that questions and alters the status quo of a certain culture, material, object or thing. By working with a diaspora of things in which he himself shapes and redefines the qualities of perceptual representations, Fakhim traps them in their actual transitional state. Consciously challenging and playfully affirming a plurality of realities and directions.

* According to Graham when fire encounters cotton it “relates” to the cotton primarily by way of its flammability. All other aspects of cotton’s being – its color, usability, smell, etc. – withdraw from the fire’s relation with cotton.
** A “broodje kapsalon” is a dish consisting of fries, shoarma or döner, topped with grilled cheese and fresh salad. Often served with garlic sauce or sambal.

Photos: Chun-Han Chiang & Neeltje de Vries

Gijs Assmann, Niko Lee Gail Démoed, Bonno van Doorn, Mischa Doorenweerd, Daan Gielis, Maurice Gobert, Lisette van Hoogenhuyze, Bas van den Hurk, Susanne Khalil Yusef, Anastasia Kiseleva, Gijs van Lith, Hemaseh Manawi Rad, Cengiz Mengüç, Golrokh Nafisi, Ulrike Rehm, Niko Riedinger, Maria Roosen, Anđela Vidić and Manon Wertenbroek

14 December 2019 - 16 February 2020

The pre- revolution films and music of Iran that my mother viewed and listened to, together with Western culture, which trickled in through the TV, formed my imagery and youth. Films, animations & music were swallowed up regularly in order to give meaning to the “inter-spatial” existence of an outsider. I think this assembly and (also referred to as) clash is still visible in my works. Whether it is interwoven in its entirety or where parts are shown as separate components in my works, the battle is visible in most cases. This is done through materials and techniques within various media. For the composition of a group show I went looking for artists to whom I feel connected, be it artistically, in the process or on a spiritual level.

“Traditionally, the Sofreh is a term for an iconic Persian fabric served as the backdrop for seasonal feasts and celebrations. Over time, the term itself has taken on a larger cultural significance: it refers to a gathering, a sharing, a place for family and friends to come together”

In this way I came naturally to a daily used Iranian word; Sofreh. One of the cultural characteristics that I have been able to inherit is the hospitality. In addition, the generosity that I would like to use artistically to furnish the space of NMAG with works by my related artist’s family & friends. An exhibition that generates gathering, using an old traditional cultural signifier.

- curated by Arash Fakhim

Photos: Chun-Han Chiang

05 - 29 September 2019

Since 2011 No Man’s Art Gallery has opened temporary galleries in Rotterdam, Hamburg, Mumbai, Amsterdam, Paris, Copenhagen, Cape Town, Shanghai and Tehran showing the work of many young artists in atomic shelters, warehouses, historical residences and graveyards.

Exactly one year ago, the gallery opened a permanent gallery space and bar in Bos & Lommer hosting an exhibition program influenced by the artists and networks we started collaborating with abroad.

The only way to celebrate our 1 year anniversary here in Amsterdam West is by inviting the artists that have been contributing to our international pop-up program over the past 7 years. 

Photos: Dieuwke Eggink

online catalogue

8 June - 18 August 2019

“Reality enters our senses as a kaleidoscopic flux of impressions”, linguist Whorf (1897-1941) once said. This flux must be sorted out in our brains and the structure of our language plays an important role in this. It is estimated that over 7000 different languages are spoken worldwide. All of these languages differ from one another and ask of different information from their speakers. The hypothesis of Linguistic Relativity questions to what extent the language we speak shapes the way we think and, consequently, view the world. If the language you speak has no word for a certain object or concept, does that mean that you’re not capable of thinking about it?

As a photographer with a BA in General Linguistics this question grasped the imagination of Desiré van den Berg, since this could imply that one not only listens but also looks in the language one was taught from birth – purely by chance. It brought her through the heart of Russia, a travel by train through frozen tundra, barren plains and bustling cities, spanning six time zones and ten thousand kilometres. All in search of goluboy – a colour that does not exist in her native tongue.In Russian, goluboy means light blue. Dark(er) blue is siniy. Unlike Dutch (or English), where light and dark blue are two shades of a single colour, in Russian they are separate, each carrying their own associations and implications. As a result, it has been found that this for example affects memory in the way that a non-native Russian speaker is less able to accurately remember the shade of perceived blue. GOLUBOY challenges us to cut our concept of blue in half and maybe even learn to ‘look’ in a different language.

“I followed the path of the Russian language from St. Petersburg, via Moscow to Vladivostok, and captured blue as I know it, all the while exploring the edges and boundaries of my perception. Changing skies and waters along my way showed me blue in all its hues and even the snow adopted a blue glow during twilight hours. It made me wonder: if programming already happens at the unconscious level of language processing, what are the consequences on conscious thinking? What is the role of our language systems in a world of growing polarisation? By using color categorisation in language as an example of the possible underlying process of intuitive thinking, I’m hoping to bring awareness to the subject of subliminal mental boundaries.” - Desiré van den Berg

online catalogue

8 June - 18 August 2019

Mia Chaplin is a painter who lives and works in Cape Town and the second artist-in-residence at the gallery’s permanent space in Bos en Lommer, where she has been working on her new presentation for the past month.
Working in oil on canvas and paper, her highly expressive works are characterized by their rich impasto surfaces and visible brushstrokes. Chaplin’s most recent works emphasize a muted colour palette of pink fleshy tones and golden highlights, consisting of still life, figure studies and landscapes.

For ‘Underbelly’ Chaplin created paintings and sculptural objects, in which she explores the crooked, misshapen and imperfect nature of intimate relationships as they manifest in private environments. Chaplin is interested in gendered power structures and how identity is performed through societally-entrenched femininity. The fracturing of these intimate images suggests a feeling of disrepair or destruction. There is an attempt to garner control and autonomy, a holding together of something which keeps falling apart. ‘Underbelly’ is the urge to create a solid feeling, and the need to understand and own agency.

Since completing her BFA at the Michaelis School of Fine Art in Cape Town in 2011, Chaplin has hosted several solo exhibitions Mouth (2018) and Under a Boiling River (2017), both with WHATIFTHEWORLD. She has also recently extended her painting practice into printmaking, hosting a mini-exhibition of monotypes from the series, The Making of a Sharp Blade (2017), in collaboration with Warren Editions, Cape Town. Chaplin has completed artist residency programs at Cité Internationale Des Artes in the Marais district, Paris (2018), Nirox Arts Foundation in Johannesburg, South Africa (2016) and at OBRAS Foundation in Alentejo, Portugal (2015)

Photos: Dieuwke Eggink

9 March - 5 May 2019

No Man’s Art Gallery is honored to present RECOLLECTION, the first solo exhibition by Majid Biglari in Amsterdam. The in Tehran-based artist is the first artist-in-residence at the gallery’s new location in Bos & Lommer and has been working on a new series on site for the past two months.

RECOLLECTION shows his new series titled Mourning (2019) consisting of sculptures, a photographic installation, paintings and a video, which is the result of the artist’s archival collection of various global events of terror, loss and natural disasters.

Living among the ruins has become an inseparable part of life. The remains are raw, scattered and inconsistent signs of all things that no longer exist. The subdued experience of living in the new world order will not erase these facts from our daily existence, as images, news, and information are readily available to us throughout different media. We find ourselves among the ruins everywhere. The availability of information does not increase awareness or prevents the ruins, but normalizes them, while people continue living in ignorance. Ruins become reduced experiences of humans.

Majid Biglari presents five memorials, objects in which he addresses the absence of their initial traces. What is left is solely their aesthetic formal quality. Memorials, with the accumulation of their bitter memories, are becoming useless, fake bodies; structures that reproduce aestheticized versions of disasters, while they become part of it. When humanity does not take time to mourn, monuments of oblivion are produced one after the other in old and new formats. Numbers lose their expressiveness and return to their formal, abstract nature.

Majid Biglari (Iran, 1986) earned his BA in Sculpture from Tehran University of Art. He has exhibited his work in various solo and group exhibitions in amongst others at TMoCA as part of the 7th Edition of Tehran National Sculpture Biennial, Mohsen Gallery Tehran, Rogue Space New York and No Man’s Art Pop-up Gallery Tehran in 2016. Majid Biglari lives and works in Tehran.

Photos: Neeltje de Vries

9 March - 5 May 2019

No Man’s Art Gallery is honored to present ‘The beauty one cometh’ the first solo exhibition by Marilyn Sonneveld. The artist presents a new series of work in which she studied the representation of the female body by focussing on beauty, femininity and its manipulation and distortion.

The beauty one cometh is the definition of the name of Nefertiti, the Royal Wife of the Egyptian Pharaoh Akhenaten. The famous limestone bust of Nefertiti has made her one of the most known woman of the ancient world; the icon of feminine beauty. Throughout the years, the bust of Nefertiti has been represented as such to disguise her missing eye by working with en-profile documentation and shadowing. Marilyn Sonneveld took these obscured deviations of female beauty as a point of departure for her solo exhibition.

The artist presents a series based on eight renowned paintings such as The Venus of Urbino by Titiaan, Venus and Mars by the School of Fontainebleau and Young Woman at her Toilette by Bellini next to works which show female figures found on social media that are distorted, camouflaged and manipulated either by the source or the artist. The series are placed in a site-specific context filled with images which by repetition and zooming in become more and more abstract and unfamiliar.

In the exhibition the eye is the spectator, scattered around the gallery. We are embedded by beauty ideals and hyperreal images. The own eye is by definition a filter –  an algorithm is not only imposed on us, but grows within ourselves.

Marilyn Sonneveld (1990, NL) is a visual artist based in Amsterdam. She graduated from the Willem de Kooning Academie in Rotterdam in 2013. Her practice centers around sexuality, femininity and flowers in illustration and printing techniques. Sonneveld is the co-founder of Wipsite a novel and contemporary form of sexual education in form of animation and illustration.

Photo credits: Neeltje de Vries

2 February - 3 March 2019

No Man’s Art Gallery is honored to present Meta Darlings, a group exhibition organised by Berlin-based artist Fabian Herkenhoener:

The next day we hit the road in her parents car to find that secret world she saw the day before, appearing in the surface of a rotten apple.

Leaving balance as an act of doing, just letting go, getting lost in order to make –leaving conformity leaving sanity, to unknown territory where shapes of reality can appear. There’s no linear hierarchy or logic — striving to the antipodes of consciousness. The consequence of this self- performing uncertainty leads to the materialization of a true reckless abandon.

Reality is a labyrinth which can be navigated in different ways. There’s not only one solution to solve its riddles. We are facing a time of creating an identity which transcends the boundaries of our own little shells. We should embrace and cultivate the synaptic and spiritual networks we create with others.

Press:
”Jezelf verliezen om iets wezenlijks te maken”, Het Parool, Edo Dijksterhuis
Meta Darlings, Tzvetnik 2018

Photo credits: Neeltje de Vries

20 November 2018 - 20 January 2019

No Man’s Art Gallery is honored to present the fourth solo exhibition by French artist Bertrand Peyrot. ‘When water becomes earth’ shows us the subtle shift into the realm of the three-dimensional.

During the course of his career Peyrot has worked incessantly to control the process of oxidation in order to influence the metal plates to demonstrate an opulence of colour and texture. Peyrot’s experience with the technique allowed him to gradually minimize the interventions with the metal plate, trusting on the natural changes that the water would make to the metal, leaving the result more up to time and chance. The corrosive process brings a myriad of layers, outlines, drawings, and detail – elements that create a painting.

‘When water becomes earth’ emphasizes the phenomenological experience of space, process, gravity and time. The artist has translated the metal plate into experimental sculptural gestures and suspended abstractions with a three-dimensional view, often combined with the use of pigments to create a painterly composition.

Bertrand Peyrot was the first artist to have a solo exhibition at No Man’s Art Gallery in 2012, when the gallery was still located as pop-up location at the Plantage Muidergracht in Amsterdam. NMAG has exhibited Peyrot’s work at all pop-up locations including the ones in Tehran, Mumbai, Shanghai and Cape Town. This summer Peyrot showed a retrospect of his work at Palais du Roi de Rome near Paris, France.

Photo credits: Chun-Han Chiang

20 November 2018 - 20 January 2019

No Man’s Art Gallery is honored to present ‘iNcence’, the first solo exhibition of Buhlebezwe Siwani in the Netherlands. Siwani has a multidisciplinary practice that includes video, drawing, and installation always in relation to the performative and bodily act. Siwani’s art practice is strongly correlated with her practice as an initiated sangoma, a spiritual healer that works within the space of the death and the living.

For ‘iNcence’, Siwani presents three large scale soap drawings on paper in dialogue with soap drawings on enamel plates and video work. Each of the works on display relates to the act of cleansing, both physically and spiritually. The act is performed by and for the black body. For Siwani, “the works reconcile broader ideas around the colonial, the black body, spirituality, how DNA carries trauma, memory and purity. “Soap and black bodies have been synonymous with the thought that black bodies are always dirty, that would mean that black men must be dirtier? But I am not a man; I am just a female lens that has been asked to cleanse herself endlessly in multiple ways because one is always thought of as a lesser or rather dirtier human being.” (Siwani) By performing the ritual of cleansing, both spiritually and physically, can one cleanse the presence of history and colonial trauma?

In the right mezzanine, we see a video in which Siwani performs a spiritual cleansing by removing the feathers of a white chicken from her body. The abstract suspended soap drawings on paper in de left mezzanine have taken bathing scenes as a point of departure, or rather the common trope of “the bathers” in the canon of Western art: the intimate ritual primarily performed by female nudes, symbolizing cleanliness, vulnerability and purity. Siwani reacts to these representations by envisioning the black male into these scenes, seeking to disturb the idea that this sensitivity, purity and cleanliness is a feminine aspect or tied to female sensitivities while at the same time seeking to absolve the black male of the ways in which the black body has been represented in the Western art history.

Green soap is a well-known and everyday used product in South Africa’s rural areas by people with modest socio-economic conditions. In Siwani’s memory, the long brightly green bar is cut into pieces, each piece its own purpose: either meant for the laundry, the dishes, or the body. Its smell is penetrating, its composition tenacious. In the practice of Buhlebezwe Siwani it is a recurring material, presented in many forms. Its usage in the large bather drawings alludes to the presence of the bodies that have been dissected and fetishized throughout (art) history.

Buhlebezwe Siwani completed her BAFA(Hons) at the Wits School of Arts in Johannesburg in 2011 and her MFA at the Michaelis School of Fine Arts in 2015. She has exhibited at Documenta14, Art/Afrique, Le Nouvel Atelier, Foundation Louis Vuitton, Africa Raccontare un Mondo, PAC museum Milan and Labor, Reparations, Theater Spektakel, Zurich, Switzerland. She currently works and lives in the Netherlands.

Press:
’Langzaam plukt ze haar veren’, Het Parool, Sophia Zürcher
’Man overboord’, Elle, 2018

Photo credits: Chun-Han Chiang