Hectobar

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Kees Koomen: Amore – 2019 (olieverf op doek – 26×30 cm)

Hectobar is an initiative that you can find regularly on Instagram. On this account artists and collectors can find works of art that can be swapped or bought during one night and the week thereafter. The unity-price for all artworks is € 100,-. Buying or swapping takes place by way of PM or in the commentaries. It is really an on-line FITAX (if you remember that one) without the drinks, the finger-food and the social interaction. It took place last friday May 7 at which occasion yours truly had this little canvas available for € 100,-. It can still be bought until May 14 through Instagram or a mail.

Hectobar

DeFKa Research Magazine SC03

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Zojuist lag DeFKa Research Magazine SC03 in de bus waarvoor enige tijd geleden inzendingen werden gevraagd middels een open call. Het thema van het magazine is Humor, Ironie en Parodie. Zelf schreef ik een essay The Lying Poet dat geplaatst werd. De titel verwijst naar een tekst van de Joodse Mysticus Meshullam da Piera waarvan ik eerder teksten voor mijn beeldende werk heb gebruikt.
Het SC03 telt 178 pagina’s en is overal, in de reguliere boekhandel en online, verkrijgbaar met het nummer ISBN 9789464350470. Prijs is € 36,50. 

Een opmerking uit mijn essay:
Zelf moest ik in dit verband denken aan de gespletenheid van de contemporaine kunstenaar in de culturele wereld: de privépersoonlijkheid en de publieke persoonlijkheid, of zoals Marcel Proust het noemde “de schrijver en de man van de wereld”. Je kan je afvragen of de “man van de wereld” een leugen is die de schrijver/kunstenaar perverteert.

Hier een indruk van het magazine:

DeFKa Research

Platforms Project NET 2021 teaser

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On the 27th of May Platforms Project in Athens starts a 2021 edition of an on-line art-fair for independent artist initiatives. More than ninety participants shall contribute. On the 5th of April these initiatives start an online teaser on the Platforms Project-site in which they present themselves. Platforms Project invited EX-MÊKH so we decided to show our individual studio work by making a video about what our practice looks like. My contribution is Berliner Porträte, seven studies of portraits of people that have caught my eye. From the initial sketches in my little notebook to the sketches in oil-paint on stone-paper one can see how these portraits develop.

A Secret Alliance

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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.

FeMaler

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FeMaler – Kees Koomen: Have You Seen the Stars Tonight?

I updated the EX-MÊKH website so that you can find the account of the openingperformances and the exhibition FeMaler on it’s page. I also posted Cquence, the video we did for Platforms Project.NET 2020. This is the page we got on the digital version of the Greek Art Fair. On my blog you can also find the post on Geen Bloem Zonder Wortel (in Dutch).

Geen bloem zonder wortel

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Tijdens Hoogtij op 25 september 2020 en het weekeinde daarna organiseert Quartair Contemporary Art Initiatives een Artist Support Fair. Hierin zijn twee kleine doekjes van mij te koop voor € 150,- per stuk.

Circe – 2020 (olieverf en houtskool op doek – 15×20 cm)
Arethusa – 2019 (olieverf en houtskool op doek – 27×31 cm)

We welcome you among the many creatives participating in the support fair ‘Geen bloem zonder wortel’ (‘No flower without root’) this weekend, from Friday, September 25th – Hoogtij #62 – to Sunday 27th. We will operate with a limited indoor capacity, following the Public Health guidelines for a safe event.

To give everyone a chance to visit the show, please consider visiting in the weekend too, as Friday will be busy due to Hoogtij#62.

In this support fair, Quartair offers a stage for artists to be represented, to show and sell their works. The revenue of the sales goes 100% to each creator. The show includes over 160 artworks, live music and a human-size walking carrot – the symbol of the roots of any culture.

Quartair
Toussaintkade 55, Den Haag

opening Friday 25th September 2020
From 6 pm to midnight
exhibition continues on Saturday 26th and Sunday 27th
from 1 pm to 6 pm

Quartair Contemporary Art Initiatives

FeMaler

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A-Trans in Berlin asked Ellen Rodenberg to make an installation in their Schaufenster exhibitions in Subwaystation Kleistpark. This season the theme of all A-Trans exhibitions is “A Femme City” dealing with the female gaze on urban developments. Ellen complied and decided to ask her male-EX-MÊKH companions Maarten Schepers and Kees Koomen to design a pendant of her installation focussing on the element of gender in EX-MÊKH.

The exhibition FeMaler will be visible from September 11 until Oktober 18 at Vitrine U – Kleistpark (U7) in 10783 Berlin.
The opening will take place with two performances on friday September 11 at 19.00 h.

“…When do we talk of a female gaze and of a female approach? What does it look like? I decided to engage the men of the EX-MÊKH-collective in this project in order to be able to hold the development of my work against the light of a male/female concept. Two shop windows next to each other, organized with work based on the male/female concept. I had discussions with Maarten Schepers and Kees Koomen about the difference in strategies, upbringing, social behavior and networking. When do we talk about expressing oneself with personal character and where do we observe the influence of gender?…”

(Ellen Rodenberg, 2020)

A-Trans

Soundhouse

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Soundhouse is a soundproject by Nico Parlevliet, sound-artist from Dordrecht NL. The artist assigned an hour of the day to twenty four artists after which he asked these artists to record the sound of that hour of their day. The results together form the sound of a day of art-practice. You can listen to it on the Soundhouse website where the practice of twenty-four artists can be heard.
Parlevliet invited me to participate and mine was the tenth hour, from 09.00 to 10.00 h. CEST. Other participants are Andrew McNiven, Elise ’t Hart, Steve Giasson, Frans van Lent, Malou van Doormaal, Ricardo Huisman, Ieke Trinks, Laura Maes, Gilbert van Drunen, Manuela Porceddu, Harald Kubicza, Michiel van Bakel, Topp & Dubio, Moritz Ebinger, Ronald van der Meijs, Ienke Kastelein, Peter Bogers, Wouter Klein Velderman, Robert Lambermont, Eve Ariza, Erhard Hirt, Rob Bothof and Gaby Tjon a Tham

Soundhouse