I published my Madrid Diary on this site. It was written and turned into shards during the Hybrid Art Fair 2022 for which EX-MÊKH was invited. It was a part of my contribution, next to the self-portrait in the bedroom and some of my Muse-paintings!

Back in Holland after a satisfying presentation by EX-MÊKH at the Hybrid Art Fair in Madrid life continues. In between other projects I wrote some reports about Madrid. On chmkoome’s blog I published daily reports and I wrote a report on ARCO on the Art-site for Den Haag Jegens & Tevens . I published EX-MÊKH’s exhibition at the Hybrid Art Fair on the EX-MÊKH site under exhibitions.

Reporters mentioned Con Alma in reports in on-line magazines ( Liceo Magazine for instance) and lots of pictures of our work showed on social media. The comment of this journalist surprised me later to my satisfaction!

On friday there will be a presentation of RUW-magazine at HOK-Gallery in Den Haag from 19.00 h onwards. Issues #4 and #5 will be presented and also other artworks of the contributors will be shown. The presentation will be open during the weekend. Editor in chief Hans Könings asked me to take part in issue #5 which I did by using a little performance I did in Berlin in 2015. I wrote the next text about it in my diary:

Ich grub in Berliner Boden

Im Antlitz spiegelt sich Berlin

Ich hab mich mit einer Staubmaske gesucht

Da fand ich ein Faden der zu mir führte

I will also show two paintings from my Muse-series in this show.

The gallery is situated on the Westeinde 61 in Den Haag

EX-MÊKH will participate in the Hybrid Art Fair in Madrid from Februari 24 to 27. The fair is held in a hotel in the centre of the city and participants are expected to exhibit in hotelrooms. We will present work under the name Con alma trying to give the neutral and functional hotelroom a soul, the soul of EX-MÊKH!
In the mean while publicity for participants is starting as you can see on this page!

EX-MÊKH has been working on a new site and today we migrated what’s ready to the domain www.ex-mekh.nl . Every exhibiton we did from 2014 is on it and the ones from 2006 will be in the coming time. Please visit and enjoy yourselves!

The artist magazine RUW! is an interesting initiative. Originally it started in Berlin because the Dutch editor, Hans Könings, lived in Berlin at the time. He asked a number of artists he knew to make an art-edition of 50 copies on A4 format and put those together in a cover especially designed for the issue at hand. The issue would be presented in an art-space with other work of contributing artists. Some years ago Könings moved back to Den Haag and he decided to start a Dutch edition of RUW! I have attended to three presentations of a new issue and I liked the idea. All the more, because I organised a similar project when studying in the US under the name Ysland – The Dutch American conspiracy.

Recently Hans asked me to contribute to RUW! #5 which already seemed very appealing to me. The theme would be Mud. So I agreed and used a performance I did in Berlin in 2014 and a text I wrote along with it as an inspiration for my page. The Text goes like this:

Ich grub in Berliner Boden

Im Antlitz spiegelt sich Berlin

Ich hab mich mit einer Staubmaske gesucht

Da fand ich ein Faden der zu mir führte

The presentation, which was scheduled on the 9th of January at HOK-gallery in Den Haag (NL), has unfortunately been postponed until further notice for obvious reasons. We’ll keep you posted.

Gisteren lag de nieuwe editie van het DeFKa REsearch magazine in de bus, 2021#4. In dat magazine staan een aantal pagina’s uit mijn Corona dagboek uit het begin van dit jaar waarin ik aantekeningen en schetsen plaatste over mensen die ik tijdens corona-wandelingen tegen kwam. Er werd gevraagd om bijdragen met als thema Souvenir & Residu. Mijn dagboeken pasten daar naar mijn mening naadloos in .

De schetsen en teksten heb ik later gebruikt om een aantal schilderijen te maken onder de naam Brief Encounters, die nu bij Het Bouwhuis in Deventer te zien zijn. De daaraan voorafgaande serie Berliner Porträte die de inspiratie was voor deze werken, is daar ook te zien zoals Gryanne van Het Bouwhuis hierboven toont!

Het Bouwhuis

DeFKa Research

For Platforms Project NET 2021 EX-MÊKH decided to make a video of the making of an installation. In it one could follow the decisions of each member on enriching the whole. Maarten Schepers built a booth like the ones we usually show our work in Athens in. During a cold week in February we came together daily to add to the installation. We decided the booth could also be seen as a stage on which performance could take place, so a number of actions were executed. We didn’t talk to each other about what each of us would do so we went through a series of surprises. My personal input was based on works of artists that inspired me. Here you can see my additions to the Stage Arousal as the video was called. I leave it to you to recognise the inspiration for the work!

Vorig jaar kwam van mij het essay A Secret Alliance uit in Issue #2, een magazine dat onregelmatig wordt uitgegeven door The faculty of In-humanities. Het blad is voor € 14,- , inclusief verzending, verkrijgbaar bij R.S.O.L, Room for the Study Of Loneliness

“Coming from a little village in a rural area with nobody around me with any intellectual or artistic ambition I felt a bit eccentric wanting to make paintings and swallowing everything about art I could find in any discipline I liked. All my information came from television, newspapers and magazines then. I studied and created for my own pleasure and felt a bit guilty about it. After finishing art-school and my studies in the USA I took jobs to earn enough money to live on, leaving enough time to continue my artistic practice anonymously. At this time I was greatly influenced by the poetry I had gotten to know. Since my first hitchhiking travels I wrote diaries and in the USA I continued to do so but now I would keep them in any discipline I could in order to gather material to work from.”

“So I started chmkoome’s blog which became quite popular. In the beginning it was rather personal with things I experienced: labels of the wine I drunk, atmospheres during a walk or an opinion on politics, but eventually I started to visit exhibitions and openings more and I posted that. The emphasis changed to art in my posts.”

“Looking back at it now I think this concept suits me as a viewer and as an artist. The attention is with the artwork and the viewer. The work is visible for who wants to see it and there’s no artistic persona in between who can influence the valuation. I want to work on my art and make it accessible in the most unstressed way possible. I want to have my ideas, my engagement with art and my own work touching and inspiring people Through collaboration I hope colleagues and I will both benefit from each-others art and interpretations. It is with an attitude of openness, respect and a certain generosity towards each other that the visibility of art and artists will grow.”

R.S.O.L.