Guillaume Bijl & Philip Akkerman

"I
am a fan of Guillaume Bijl's work.

Whenever
I see an installation by Guillaume Bijl, I feel the urge to add a
painting of my own to that installation. When I asked Guillaume a
year ago if he would be interested in such a collaboration, he didn't
ask any questions but indicated that he wanted to participate in the
project. That made me happy, but at the same time I broke out in a
cold sweat. How was I going to explain this to people? You can't just
hang a painting in an installation by another artist, can you?

As
far as I'm concerned, there are no rules for art: ANYTHING GOES! But
the art world demands an explanation, a statement. I don't have that,
at least not yet. Everything I ever did as an artist, I did
intuitively, without intellectual reason. I just did what I felt I
had to do. Theoretical explanations and profound thoughts always came
years later. That will be no different with this project…"

-
Philip
Akkerman, 29 September, 2024

About
Guillaume Bijl

Guillaume
Bijl (1946, lives and works in Antwerp) has been known since the
1970s for his large-scale installations for which he uses found
objects. With this, Bijl took a pioneering role in the reintroduction
of the ready-made. He shows the viewer various aspects of our Western
'civilisation' and consumer society. He creates an 'archaeology of
our time' using stereotypes in a tragicomic, alienating way.
Guillaume is represented in the Netherlands by Lumen Travo Gallery.

About
Philip Akkerman

Philip
Akkerman (1957, lives and works in The Hague) has painted exclusively
self-portraits since 1981. Thanks to his self-imposed restriction to
self-portraits, he no longer has to worry about the subject. This
gives him the freedom to experiment wildly with styles, colours and
shapes. Philip uses the wealth of painting techniques and movements
from the entire history of art and the resulting oil paintings vary
from realistic to abstract, from detailed to deliberately naive.

This
exhibition presents a selection of recent paintings by Philip
Akkerman, combined with a number of installations by Guillaume Bijl.