AMSTERDAM.- GRIMM presents back on earth, an exhibition of new work by London-based Dutch artist Michael Raedecker at the gallery in Amsterdam (NL).
This marks Raedecker’s eighth solo exhibition with GRIMM, and coincides with Amsterdam Art Week, a city-wide programme celebrating the Dutch contemporary art scene. To accompany this event, the artist will be signing copies of his recent monograph published by Phaidon titled everything, but not everything at GRIMM, Amsterdam (NL), from 2 - 5 pm on Saturday, 1 June.
back on earth continues Raedecker’s exploration into the symbiotic and often parasitic relationship between nature and humanity – to understand our place in the world and draw attention to the proximity and power of nature in relation to the urban environment. The exhibition’s title refers to the idea of the artist’s studio and the act of painting creating a liminal space outside of reality – a contemplative world away from the pace and demands of life, that adheres to its own rules and logic. In recent years Raedecker has begun to explore darker scenes in his work, indicating the increased tensions and strangeness of the world today, with what he describes as 'all the world’s darkness trickling into the studio’.
Michael Raedecker’s work seeks to make sense of the symbiotic and often parasitic relationship between nature and humanity – to understand our place in the world and draw attention to the proximity and power of nature in relation to the urban environment. His distinctive practice blends painting with richly textural embroidery, conjuring scenes that hold the urban in an uneasy balance with nature which creeps and sprawls across the canvas, over open car doors, solitary sun loungers, and vacant pools. In both its content and form, Raedecker’s work engages with the act of deconstruction and reconfiguration, resisting the perceived distinctions between ‘fine art’ and craft, and drawing attention to competing surface qualities and the illusion of representation as he subverts the painted canvas with textured details.
Over the course of his career, Raedecker has consistently explored the impact of a changing world on the meaning and context of his work, interrogating not only the subject matter but the medium through which it is communicated. Building on an initial idea in paint and thread, Raedecker photographs and digitally manipulates the piece before transposing it onto a large canvas on which he builds up a sculpted surface through paint and thread again, restoring the human hand to the digital reproduction. Traversing the handmade and the mechanical, Raedecker collapses the original into the copy and back into to the original. The resulting work captures a prevailing sensation of the uncanny – capturing the presence of humanity through our visual absence in relation to the environment. Recurring motifs such as swimming pools and empty cabins suggest an absent figure – highlighting the strangeness of the suburban terrain sitting at the junction where the landscape meets man-made dwellings. A placid, dark palette is set in violent contrast with vivid blues, greens, and pinks, capturing Raedecker’s haunting observations on our own ephemerality.
Michael Raedecker (b. 1963, Amsterdam, NL) lives and works in London (UK). He received his BA in Fashion Design from the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam (NL), and continued his studies at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam (NL) as well as Goldsmiths College, London (UK). In 2000, Raedecker was shortlisted for the Turner Prize. His work can be found in the collections of Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven (NL); ABN AMRO Art Collection (NL); AkzoNobel Art Collection, Amsterdam (NL); Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL (US); Astrup Fearnley Museum, Oslo (NO); British Council, London (UK); He Art Museum, Foshan (CN); ENECO Art Collection, Utrecht (NL); Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY (US); ING Art Collection, Amsterdam (NL); Istanbul Modern Collection, Istanbul (TR); Kunstmuseum, The Hague (NL); MAXXI National Museum of XXI Century Arts, Rome (IT); Museum van Bommel van Dam, Venlo (NL); De Nederlandsche Bank (NL); Rabo Art Collection (NL); Tate, London (UK); Museum Voorlinden, Wassenaar (NL); Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool (UK).
