@ Hybrid Art Fair 2024

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I presented four portraits from my series New Encounters in the EX-MÊKH exhibition ¿De Donde?. They represent people I notice on weekly walks to the Malieveld in Den Haag. I write a description in my telephone and mail it home. Then, in my studio, I paint the portraits in oilpaint on stone paper. I also write words from the texts in the painting. It is a hommage to Francisco Goya whose drawings and comments I admire greatly.
In the Petit Palace Hotel I presented two portraits on a background of text, written on the wall with one wollen thread and two portraits without backgrounds. Also, above the bed in the room I wrote a text with one red woolen thread: Her spine moved like a snake . The wall was almost black there with blue in it which contrasted beautifully with the red of the text. Maarten Schepers placed sculpture on the bed underneath which in one blink could have been paws of animals, maybe pre-historic, which would have suggested fossiles. On the other hand the work could also have been seen as flowers on a grave or a monument. This would have turned the bed into a place of memory. The contrast with my text, which to me has an erotic connotation, placed above the bed as it was, opened a lot of associations to me. It enables me to eleborate on this way of working.

Her Spine Moved Like a Snake
Maarten Schepers: Flowerfeet
A Sudden Fit of Melancholia
It looks Like They Are Dissolving
left: I Imagine Them Speaking French Inside
right: You Are Right, You Have a Good Point There

Equinox

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Equinox was a succes with more then twenty performers on the Hof in Dordrecht. There were moments that the atmosphere was beautiful in slow movements with colour and sound.
My own performance existed of soundbytes that I spread out over the square by speaking them out to people, by writing them on little scraps of paper and hiding them on the square and by listening for sounds of the past on different places of the historic square. The soundbytes were pieces of conversation or cries that I noted during my project Walks to the Malieveld. You can find an account of the afternoon here! And a video by Steef van Lent can be found here!

I did also make two sketches of performers which you can see here:

A man pouring water (Frans van Lent)
A woman manipulating textiles (Marita Bulman)
Briefje met soundbyte

222lodge

Benefit auction De Aanschouw

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Auctionmaster Auke Triesschein hits the hammer, in this case for work of Toine “Dutch Bushman” Klaasen

De Aanschouw is the smallest gallery in The Netherlands. Until now it’s location is in the Witte de With straat in Rotterdam, better known for its terraces and art centres Melly and TENT. The gallery is a showcase across from where the NRC was once produced. Once the newspaper was ready for print the first newspaper to come out was shown in the showcase across the street, next to café De Schouw. The bar was famous for its clientèle amongst which artists, writers and editors of NRC. When De Aanschouw started it showed an art piece once a week. The initiators invited curators to present weekly art pieces. Daan den Houter, famous Rotterdam artist, started his project Overschilderschilderij here also. After painting a self-portrait he invited painters he knew to paint a new painting over it. Each new painter covered the preceding painting. This way the painting became a brick-like object , it has hundred forty-nine paintings covering it now. The new exhibitions of paintings and of the Overschilderschilderij always open at de wissel (the change), on Thursday night at 21.00 h.

Volunteers took care of the exhibitions and organisation of it and to get some working-capital they thought of an annual auction at the start of the season. This took place on the street in the Witte de Withstraat at the opening of the cultural season. Lately TENT invites De Aanschouw to do it in their space. Because of Corona the auction has been postponed for three years. This time it took place at the end of the season though, coinciding with the end of De Aanschouw at café De Schouw. The gallery-showcase will move to Café Ari at de Nieuwe Binnenweg in Rotterdam.

Auction assistent Maurice Meeuwisse showing my painting GREAT! which was sold at the auction

Because I had the honour to first show a painting in De Aanschouw and to paint a painting on the Overschilderschilderij . Later the organisation invited me to participate in the auction, which I did with pleasure.

EX-MÊKH in De Aanschouw 2015- Kees Koomen: Putin
Overschilderschilderij Kees Koomen: Malieveld – 2020

Driftwood

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Back from a short stay elsewhere I found DeFKa-Research Magazine #6 in my mailbox. In this magazine essays and art on the theme Driftwood are published. I participated with a piece under the name Drijfhout (text in Dutch) with outtakes from my diaries from since I finished art school. The Illustrations are artworks that were based on these outtakes. I first wrote a thorough theoretical piece, but I changed my mind about that and I send in this text thinking it is better to show and not tell. Magazines can be ordered on the site of DeFKa Research.

An older text that I wrote for DeFKa Research, The Lying Poet, can now be read on my own site.

Cover of the magazine
The first pages

Trace of muse

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And this is the edition I made for l’Anniversaire de l’Art: Trace of Muse. You might remember the first appearance when I was having a beer during my residency in France in 2008. Or the search for her under water as a Malieveld-action off-site in France. During my research in the USA she also appeared in San Francisco at Montgomery. I even have a text on shard about her! These are stones taken from the Sorgue River on January 5, 2023. It is an edition of five footprints of the muse I keep encountering. The colour comes from pigment I got from Roussillon near the source of the Sorgue river:

Kees Koomen: Trace of Muse (edition of five) – 2023

HOK Gallery

Con alma

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Today we discovered a post of the Hybrid Art Fair in Madrid which will start in three weeks. It is coming near and I look forward to visiting the other fairs in the Madrid Art Week: ARCO, JUST MAD-Art Fair, Drawing Room and Art Madrid.
The title of EX-MÊKH’s exhibition will be Con Alma. We take the soul of the collaboration of Ellen Rodenberg, Maarten Schepers and me into the hotel room of the Petit Palace Hotel. We change it into a mirror for our public to reflect on!

Hybrid Art Fair

ART BBQ Studio-playlists

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Last Sunday my personal Studio Playlist for the year 2021 was published on ART BBQ. Rotterdam sculptor Ron van der Ende publishes playlists of befriended artists every year since 2006. Its the music they hear during work in their studio. I have participated since the beginning and always found it a nice and reflective thing to do. He also asks for pictures concerning the art practice to illustrate the page the playlists are published on which give some very nice insights of the way artists do their work and what their studios look like.

Les Idiolithes

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This past weekend the opening of ‘Les idiolithes’ took place in Paris. After the first performances with ‘Conversation with a Stone about Freud’s Correspondence about Stones’ executed by Forbes Morlock and ‘Sounding the Stone‘ by Yorgos Dimitriades the video’s ‘Les idiolithes’ by KRAATZ,  ‘Soma(2) – Moksha ‘by Sabine Bürger and ‘Stage Arousal‘ by EX MÊKH are shown for the first time on the sixteen screens on the front of the building.

Stage Arousal ( still)
For a report on the first day (in Dutch): click on the picture!

On the second day the ritual return of the stone is executed: the members of Kraatz pass the stone to the members of EX-MÊKH. After a break the performance ‘Sentiers d’été‘ is executed by Kees Koomen and after another break Ex-MÊKH’s Ellen Rodenberg gives a workshop.

Sentiers d’été
For a report on the second day (in Dutch): click on the picture!