melanie bonajo, When the body says Yes @ Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen Collection

Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen acquires melanie bonajo’s When the body says Yes

melanie bonajo, When the body says Yes

© melanie bonajo / Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen

Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen receives When the body says Yes in its museum collection. The installation, created by Dutch artist melanie bonajo,  was exhibited during the summer of 2024 during the much talked about event Craving for Boijmans. There it functioned as a sensory end piece for a special art route through the closed museum building. In 2022, When the body says Yes was the Dutch entry for the 59th Venice Biennale.

When the body says Yes

This art piece by melanie bonajo is an installation consisting of a video artwork that is 43 minutes in length, framed by an organically-shaped scenography created in collaboration with fellow artist Théo Demans. When the body says Yes takes the viewer through and around the body, addressing the role of sexuality, body positivity, gender and consent within our society. There’s a very diverse group of people featured in the film, which challenges the viewer with a multitude of questions: on sexuality, the body and a personal vision on gender beyond the stereotypical patterns.

Craving for Boijmans

When the body says Yes was a prime attraction during Craving for Boijmans. It became an inspiring challenge and collaboration between the museum, the artists and the gallery to land the piece at the majestic Bodonzaal. It injected a humanity into what was an abandoned building. Not just thanks to the expressive, inclusive design, but most of all the topics that were addressed. When the body says Yes builds a bridge between the human who experiences it and the individuals who appear inside of it. Visitors have reacted in a positive way – often surprised or provoked – which speaks to the continuous social relevance of the subjects melanie bonajo addresses in their work.

melanie bonajo is an artist, filmmaker, sexological bodyworker, somatic sex coach and educator, cuddle workshop leader and activist. Through videos, performances, photographs and installations, bonajo explores current issues arising from living together in a capitalist system. melanie bonajo is represented by AKINCI.

MUSEUM BOIJMANS VAN BEUNINGEN

Museumpark 18-20, 3015 CX Rotterdam

www.boijmans.nl

Focus Beijing. Collection De Heus-Zomer at Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam

Focus Beijing

Collection De Heus-Zomer

Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam

14 June - 21 September 2014

The Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen presents a selection from the collection of Chinese contemporary art amassed by Henk de Heus and his wife Victoria de Heus-Zomer. The couple have been travelling to China regularly since the late nineteen-nineties, buying work by leading artists. This important private collection of contemporary Chinese art has never been exhibited in context before.

Henk de Heus and Victoria de Heus-Zomer’s collection of Chinese art is unique in the Netherlands. Since their first visit to China in 1998 they have been collecting contemporary Chinese art. Underpinning this extraordinary collection is the relationship of trust that the couple has built up with various artists over the years. In dialogue with the collectors, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen has selected some twenty artists who represent two generations, and live and work in Beijing. The museum is showing a selection of paintings, photographs and sculptures. The exhibition is the grand finale crowning a series of three exhibitions of works from the De Heus-Zomer Collection.

Current Art from Beijing

‘Focus on Beijing: Collection De Heus-Zomer’ is an exhibition spotlighting a number of prominent artists from Beijing who represent two generations. The first grew up in the nineteen-fifties and sixties. Their works reflects strong political engagement, with allusions to China’s traumatic history and the social and cultural revolution she has undergone in recent decades. Artists like Zhang Dali (Harbin, 1963), Zhang Xiaogang (Kunming, 1958), Hai Bo (Changchun,1962) and Ai Weiwei (Beijing, 1957) represent this generation. The second generation of artists grew up in the nineteen-seventies and eighties, the period of the Chinese open-door policy. Artists like Qiu Xiaofei (Hoerbin, 1977), Wang Guangle (Fujian, 1976) and Liang Yuanwei (Xi’an, 1977) were born at a time when Chinese society was starting to turn more towards the West, a period of strong growth when the effect of market forces was becoming evident. Individuality and intuition are key to their work as artists. They know all about trends in the global art world-much more than that art world knows about developments in contemporary Chinese art.

The De Heus-Zomer Collection

Henk and Victoria de Heus-Zomer have been collecting art since the late nineteen-eighties. When they began, they were looking for things to fill the walls in their house in Barneveld. Over the years the collection grew to become a leading private collection, with numerous masterpieces by artists like Marlene Dumas, René Daniëls, JCJ VanderHeijden, Neo Rauch, Anselm Kiefer and Thomas Struth. Since 2010 they have created three exhibitions of work from the collection: in Singer Laren and last year in Museum Belvédère. Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen concludes this trilogy.

Sensory Spaces 4 - Liu Wei

The focus of Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen’s summer programme this year is contemporary Chinese art. To coincide with Focus on Beijing, the Chinese artist Liu Wei has been commissioned by Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen to make a site-specific installation for the Sensory Spaces series. In this series an artist is invited to respond to the properties of a particular space-the museum’s Willem van der Vorm Gallery- and manipulate them in an unexpected manner. Liu Wei’s monumental work is a reflection on China’s urbanization.

Focus Bejing - De Heus-Zomer Collection

Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam - 2014

English - Chinese exhibition catalogue 

Authors: Feng Boyi, Hans den Hartog Jager, Noor Mertens

Design by Stern / Den Hartog & De Vries

23 x 28 cm - 192 p. - ISBN:978-90-6918-279-7 -Hardcover

Catalogue/ARTtube: Accompanying the exhibition is a publication with contributions by Feng Boyi, Hans den Hartog Jager, Noor Mertens and Sjarel Ex. An ARTtube video is also being developed for the exhibition.

MUSEUM BOIJMANS VAN BEUNINGEN

Museumpark 18-20, 3015 CX Rotterdam

www.boijmans.nl

Charley Toorop, Museum Boijams Van Beuningen, Rotterdam - Surtout pas des principes!

Surtout pas des principes! Charley Toorop

Museum Boijams Van Beuningen, Rotterdam

27 September 2008 – 18 January 2009

A total of 120 works have been gathered for the Charley Toorop (1891-1995) retrospective, including almost all her self-portraits. The exhibition ‘Surtout pas des principes! Charley Toorop’ has been put together by Marja Bosma, who has also written a book of the same name about the life and work of one of the foremost female Dutch artists of the 20th century.

Both the exhibition and the book contain a wealth of information about Charley Toorop, clarifying associations and highlighting influences, making it easier to see how key works from her oeuvre fit into her larger body of work. This large-scale retrospective clearly highlights Toorop’s importance for Dutch art.

For Charley Toorop, painting was the ultimate form of self-realisation, making her work both unavoidable and imposing. A perfect example of this is the self-portrait from 1928 that was recently acquired by Museum Boijmans van Beuningen.

Charley Toorop was the daughter of the symbolist Jan Toorop, who was one of the foremost artists in the Netherlands during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His ‘salad oil’ style is a term that remains in use even today. Toorop prepared his only child for life as an artist and despite being predestined to take up music, she chose instead to follow in her father’s footsteps. Rather than attending art school, she learned the trade from him. At an early age, she was part of ‘Het Signaal’, a predecessor of the Bergense School. Her work in those days was expressionistic in nature, featuring vibrant colours and sweeping brush strokes, which she combined with darker undertones and dissonant colours. A mystical experience of nature underpinned this work, which was representative of the Bergense School from the outset.

After an unsuccessful marriage to Henk Fernhout, with whom she had three children, she established herself in a house built specially for her in Bergen called ‘De Vlerken’, where she worked steadily on her painting career. Painting always occupied the primary position in her life. She travelled regularly, particularly to France. She also stayed regularly in Brussels. Her circle of friends was made up principally of prominent artists and intellectuals including the poets Adriaan Roland Holst and Henny Marsman, painter Piet Mondriaan, sculptor John Rädecker, architects Rietveld and Oud and the anarchist thinker Arthur Lehning.

Charley Toorop’s social and political commitment was the catalyst for her to develop her work into a style of confrontational realism, where she presented her subjects head on. This applies not only to her remarkable self-portraits in which she penetrates the viewer with her steely gaze, but also to her portraits of farmers, labourers and fishermen.

Publication: The retrospective ‘Surtout pas des principes! Charley Toorop’ is accompanied by a richly illustrated catalogue.

MUSEUM BOIJMANS VAN BEUNINGEN

Museumpark 18-20, 3015 CX Rotterdam

www.boijmans.nl

DARK. Art and the Darker Side of Existence at Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam

DARK

Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam

18 February - 17 April 2006

The darker side of existence exercises an almost irresistible attraction on society. This fascination is the theme of the international group exhibition DARK, assembled by guest curator Jan Grosfeld and Rein Wolfs. DARK is a presentation of recent developments within contemporary art; a confrontation of differing contemporary artistic visions. The exhibition in the atmospheric spaces of the museum's Van der Steur wing includes work by Luc Tuymans, Marc Bijl, Rita Ackermann, Banks Violette, Angus Fairhurst, Folkert de Jong, Dirk Braeckman, Terence Koh, Avner Ben-Gal and Kara Walker.

Common to each work in the show is an interest in the 'darker' side of life. However, DARK is more than simply 'dim' or 'unlit'. Rather it refers to a particular contemporary state of mind, with a complex of different and sometimes antithetical aspects. DARK is sometimes melancholy, music can play a role, but often does not. Indeed sometimes DARK is actually is even simply radiant white, as in the obsessive 'white powder' installations by Terence Koh.

Impure spaces

Contemporary art is usually presented in so-called 'white cube' spaces, or indeed 'black boxes' for video projections. However, DARK manifests itself in the more 'impure' spaces where the old masters are normally displayed. These galleries are especially appropriate to a project that deals with impurity, with the 'anti-pure'. A contemporary impurity comes to life against the backdrop of its historical counterpart.

A darker state of mind

Luc Tuymans expresses DARK's 'state of mind' through his oppressive images and specific subject choices, whilst Marc Bijl has a sort of rebellious Gothic stance. Terence Koh employs the decadence of gold leaf and 'white powder'. Banks Violette researches the underbelly of American culture with clinical precision. A soundtrack of electronic music brings the visitor back to the present day. This is the authenticity of an artist who understands that today successful sampling must come with a healthy dollop of intelligence. Romanticism is at the heart of Angus Fairhurst's work. A glossy pitch-black gorilla, contemplating itself like an Ur-Narcissus, is an icon of impudent and animalistic subjectivity, which is more than at home in our ego age.

Dirk Braeckman's black on black images eloquently represent the DARK 'state of mind' as does the mysterious concealed aggression of Rita Ackermann and Rachel Harrison. Folkert de Jong explores the darker side of American society, as does Georg Gatsas, whose 'court photography' illuminates the grimy New York cultural scene. In her black silhouettes Kara Walker takes on themes such as race, gender and sexuality. Daniel Hesidence voices the DARK mentality with a Munch-like scream, Avner Ben-Gal with a darker implicit narrative and Jan Lauwers with a painful theatricality. The shameless advertising aesthetic employed by Fumie Sasabuchi is sometimes shocking, much like the bestial narcissism in the work of Angus Fairhurst. Juergen Teller is in search of a singular icon in his son's birth announcement.

Now and then one can find stylistic and formal relations between the works but these are not the dominant concern. Content, emotion and authentic values play a more important role here. DARK is an exhibition that elucidates the current zeitgeist and creates a forum for a new, contemporary form of authenticity.

Participating artists:

Rita Ackermann (1968, Budapest, H)

Avner Ben-Gal (1966, Askalon, I)

Marc Bijl (1970, Leerdam, NL)

Dirk Braeckman (1958, Eeklo, B)

Angus Fairhurst (1966, Kent, UK)

Georg Gatsas (1978, Grabs SG, CH)

Gregory Crewdson (1962, Brooklyn NY, USA)

Rachel Harrison (1966, New York, USA)

Daniel Hesidence (1975, Ohio NY, USA)

Folkert de Jong (1972, Alkmaar, NL)

Terence Koh (1977, Beijing, China)

Jan Lauwers (1957, Antwerp, B)

Fumie Sasabuchi (1975, Tokyo, J)

Juergen Teller (1964, Erlangen, D)

Luc Tuymans (1958, Mortsel, B)

Banks Violette (1973, Ithaca NY, USA)

Kara Walker (1969, Stockton CA, USA)

MUSEUM BOIJMANS VAN BEUNINGEN

Museumpark 18-20, 3015 CX Rotterdam

www.boijmans.rotterdam.nl