ROTTERDAM.- As Art Rotterdam prepares to open its doors from March 26 to 29, one of the most closely watched presentations this year comes from Amsterdam’s Annet Gelink Gallery, which arrives with a carefully curated selection that bridges sculpture, painting, film, and installation.

Located at Booth F1, the gallery’s presentation brings together new and recent works by Ryan Gander and Helen Verhoeven, while extending beyond the booth into other sections of the fair with works by Marijke van Warmerdam and Meiro Koizumi. The result is not just a booth presentation, but a multi-layered presence across the fair—one that reflects on time, perception, and the shifting condition of the human experience.

A quiet dialogue with art history

At the center of the booth, Ryan Gander’s sculptural work Irretrievably broken from the past, or Low hanging fruit (2020) offers a subtle yet incisive reflection on the weight of artistic legacy.

Part of his ongoing ballerina series, the sculpture reimagines Edgar Degas’ iconic Little Dancer Aged Fourteen, but removes it from its traditional pedestal—both literally and conceptually. Cast in bronze and positioned in direct relation to a seemingly reachable object, the ballerina turns her gaze toward a “low-hanging fruit.”

The gesture is deceptively simple. The fruit becomes a metaphor for nostalgia—the temptation to revisit what is familiar, even if it ultimately limits forward movement. Gander’s work operates in this tension, inviting viewers to consider how deeply the past shapes artistic ambition, and whether it can ever truly be left behind.

Painting the politics of visibility

In contrast, Helen Verhoeven’s latest paintings introduce a more visceral and emotionally charged dimension to the presentation. Debuting a new body of work at Art Rotterdam, Verhoeven continues her exploration of human behavior—often oscillating between intimacy and spectacle.

Her series The Subjects (2026) examines the relationship between artist and subject through the lens of clothing, particularly lingerie. Here, garments become more than aesthetic elements; they act as tools for questioning visibility, vulnerability, and control.

Drawing from both historical painting traditions and contemporary visual culture, Verhoeven’s compositions resist fixed narratives. Instead, they unfold through layers of repetition, reflection, and transparency. The viewer is not given a single point of entry, but rather multiple perspectives that challenge how identity is constructed and perceived.

The works ultimately probe a central question: who controls the gaze, and what does it mean to be seen?

Time, movement, and the poetic journey

Beyond the booth, in the Projections sector, Marijke van Warmerdam presents Fast Forward (2016), a looping digital film that reflects her long-standing fascination with movement and duration.

The work traces its conceptual roots back to early documentary cinema. Inspired by a scene from Robert Flaherty’s Nanook of the North, where figures emerge unexpectedly from a canoe, van Warmerdam shifts attention away from narrative resolution and toward the act of journeying itself.

In Fast Forward, the destination becomes secondary. What matters is the unfolding of time—the rhythm, the repetition, and the subtle transformations that occur along the way. It’s a quiet, meditative counterpoint to the more immediate visual intensity found elsewhere in the fair.

The body in a technological age

Meanwhile, in Art Rotterdam’s Sculpture Park, Meiro Koizumi’s BOR (2024) introduces a more unsettling note.

Part of his ongoing Altars series, the sculpture merges fragments of the human body with machine-like structures. The resulting form feels both familiar and alien—caught somewhere between organic presence and digital abstraction.

Koizumi’s work confronts the viewer with a distorted physicality that reflects broader anxieties about technology’s growing influence. As bodies become increasingly mediated by screens, data, and artificial systems, BOR raises questions about what remains fundamentally human.

The tension embedded in the sculpture—between control and fragmentation, presence and simulation—lingers long after the initial encounter.

A poetic gesture within the fair

Adding another layer to the gallery’s presentation, artist and writer Maria Barnas contributes a poem selected from her newly released collection Tussen mij. Available at the booth, the text introduces a literary dimension that complements the visual works.

Rather than functioning as an explanatory tool, the poem acts as an open-ended gesture—echoing the themes of perception, identity, and distance that run throughout the presentation.

A constellation of perspectives

Taken together, Annet Gelink Gallery’s participation in Art Rotterdam 2026 unfolds as a constellation of interconnected ideas rather than a single narrative.

Across sculpture, painting, film, and text, the presentation explores how we relate to the past, how we see and are seen, and how our bodies and identities are shaped in an increasingly complex world.

It’s a presentation that rewards slow looking—one that invites visitors not just to observe, but to reflect on their own position within these shifting frameworks.