ANDREA FRECKMANN SAM HERSBACH MARJOLIJN VAN DER MEIJ RONALD VERSLOOT 18 May - 22 June 2025

Andrea Freckmann (1970) explored the theme of nostalgia in her series of paintings Damals so schön referencing to objects from the 60s and 70s like the Volkswagen beetle, lace curtains, board games or charming mountain villages. In her latest work Guck mal. Wie schön, she focuses on the picturesque landscape of Zeeland with its polders and cows, much like the painters of the Hague School who depicted the farms, cattle and meadows of the countryside rather than the railway lines of the advancing industrialisation of that age. In her bold and direct brushstroke she combines the landscape with ornaments and geometric patterns that counters the nostalgia of the rural scenery.

In his paintings, Sam Hersbach (1995) blends different realities ranging from selfies to quotes from art history to fantasy creatures that he brings together in a dynamic manner of painting. Sometimes he also integrates a mirrored metal plate on the canvas that deconstructs the illusion of the painting. His central work in the exhibition is a monumental 3-by-2-metre canvas which shows the 19th-century painter Ary Scheffer and his mother Cornelia Lamme. Their portraits are surrounded by a tangle of insects, plants and fish in shades of green and dark blue swarming around the two figures.

Marjolijn van der Meij (1970) has recently been working on a series of small paintings on paper in which she highlights people and objects from media and mass culture, lending them an almost sacred aura. A portrait of Virgil van Dijk seems to become an icon of a Byzantine saint, Gucci and Dior bags turn into unattainable, sacred objects. She also references to earlier images of glamour such as Pierre Imans’ fashion dolls or kitschy horses flying through a cloudy sky. As in her previous work in which she creases and distorts photos of jewellery, palaces or idyllic natural scenery, the images touch upon a collective memory in which high and low culture merge.

In Ronald Versloot‘s (1964) recent paintings the motif of an opened window appears regularly. Since the Renaissance, the painting has been a metaphor for a view to the world that gives access to a painted reality in which the artist can unfold his or her vision. Through Versloot’s simple and slim window one can discern a landscape with a cloud or a somewhat less spatial image like a pattern of branches with a bird. One can ask whether the image refers to a tangible reality or rather to a thought or a memory. Looking outwards thus is reverted into an inward gaze.