In her exhibition: Reading the River, Basia Irland shows different backpacks which she creates for each river she visits. Like a shaman, she carries with all the tools she needs to find the spirits and the ghosts that have existed there for years. She, as the artist/the shaman, is the only one that can find her way through the rivers, she is the one who can bring the messages from the other world to this one.

The still life installations of Hans Op de Beeck are nice. You could see how precise the artist is with details. But they are not as exciting as his his black and white watercolours. With this series of paintings, he succeeded in creating an imaginary space with a dream-like atmosphere, which draws you in right on the spot.

Magali Reus' work was hanged cleverly at the height of the eye. By doing so, the view of what is behind the piece, is blocked. Above all, her piece looks like futuristic architecture. Even beyond the term of The House as a living machine of Le Corbusier. Maybe Reus is showing us how the compact, hightech design houses will look like in few centuries.

All of Dit-Cilinn's works in the open studio were very exact. Even the space that was left empty between the works. This piece was one of the best: it hangs high on the wall, which makes you curious to come closer. When I got closer I was impressed by the tension and the balance on same time that was created between the different shapes and materials.

Shirley Wager created an organic line of white pieces hanging behind one another: one moment it looks like a spine of a vanished monster. Then the view changes and makes it look like a line of wonder-birds are following their invisible leader.

In the film ‘Respite’, Harun Farocki gives a new understanding of fragments taken from films that were shot at Westerbork. To what looks like daily life routine, the voice-over in the background gives a different interpretation. This text – ‘74 Pers’ – was written on one of the doors of the train trailer. Later, when a mistake in counting was discovered, the number changed to 75. According to the voice in the film, for the pedant Nazi soldiers, every person, every number was very important. Not because of the value of life, just because work has to be done perfectly when talking about numbers.  

Usually tanks and tractors leave deep tracks wherever they pass, flattening anything on their way. The chain, which is usually that which leaves the scars, in this case, contains the cure to them. Majid Biglari combined the handmade chain with old maps, and by that creates a hope for better days.

Femi Dawkins made this cartoon, a story about superheroes who all, at a certain point, merge into one superhero and later split back to different figures. The one in the picture, a feminine super hero that is dressed like a night club dancer, is one of them. Even as she is dressed like that she is able to knock down buildings one by one with just one movement of her pelvis.

 

Permanent exhibitions in museum can be predictable sometimes, and after while even boring. It is a big challenge to keep the frequent as well as the new visitors curious to visit these kind of exhibitions. The way Krijn de Koning and Anne Holtrop designed the exhibition Mondriaan & De Stijl makes me want to keep visiting the space, even after having been there already a few times! While I walk through the exhibition, I discover new angles of different and known objects each time. They succeeded to make a space which embraces the objects whilst gradually.

This photo was taken in a small village in Iran. Artist Abbas Kowsari cleverly printed it in a big size. When I was standing in front of it I felt like I’m taking part in this ritual. In this picture the artist succeeded to show how obvious this ritual is and how much it is part of daily life. 

When a government decides to achieve her goals, no matter what the conditions may be, she sacrifices people’s life. With the ideology in mind, the government places the people in the middle of nowhere, limits their movement and ignores their individual needs. In this series of photographs, Danila Tkachenko shows what was left after the people left the remote villages. The government may have reached her goals, but the people who lived in these areas paid the price.

 First I was dazzled by the handsome men, posing to the camera with their uniform and their fashionable moustaches in the film by Pim Zwier. After a few minutes the truth comes out: it might have been their last camera shot before they were killed or right before they killed other soldiers. Zwier confront us with the loss and arrogance of war.

How the next dictator look like? Artist Mahmoud Obaidi raised this question in his art work ‘The Imposter’. In the installation he created a fictional dictator by showing a uniform , films of fictional army marshes, posters and flags.  It was clear from this installation how easy it is to create a leader or even worse, a dictator.

The title of this photo in the exhibition is: “ Mrs. Rich O’Connor, voted the most beautiful mother in the United States, with her son James, 1929. “ The photographer is unknown but what is sure known, that the jury, who made this selection, were only men.

This photo collage by Caio Reisewitz reminds me the Fallingwater which was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1935 as a private house.  Both Houses look like a dream becoming true: living in a home surrounded by nature. Only in Reisewitz case it stays to be a dream.

Artist Gil Shachar is preparing the mold which he will use later to cast my head. I was inside a sculpture. What a freaky feeling! I could hear and feel only my breathing, from inside. For me there are very few reasons to shave my head, this is one of them.

I entered curious to the exhibition of known Yayoi Kusama. It took me only few minutes to feel that even my soul is covered with her famous polka dots. I found that her drawings have much more depth than just those dots, and her installations have much more meaning; like this one. In a field of uncooked pasta, penises in different sizes, some erected and some after, scattered in female shoes. Somehow it looks as if the penises are a bit lost, and dependent on these shoes to find their way.

Look how Narcissus looks at himself. His head bowed in an impossible gesture, one that can be created only in sculpture. Artist Ernest Hiolle twisted the torso and stretched the neck dramatically to make him look at his reflection in the water. When I looked at this Narcissus face, I could totally understand why he was in love with himself.

Already by climbing onto the roof of the church made me feel as if every staircase brought me closer to God. Having arrived to the top, I was standing on the panoramic terrace, the art work of Taturo Atzu. This work, called The Garden Which is the Nearest to God, justified its name: this golden angel I found in the small room on the terrace was sending a perpetual message to God.

BEST OF GRADUATES 2016. When you visit an academy’s graduation exhibition, your mind set has to be adjusted to a different mode; different than visiting any other exhibition. In these exhibitions, students can show immature works or a beginning of a search, it is even recommended. But many times they are trying to show final products in these graduation exhibitions, which are many times with a weak artistic statement. The work of Anatole de Benedictis surprised me! Humble, precise works on A4 papers which look like an urban plan and a typography at the same time, sliding between the scale of the city and the scale of letters. Touching De Stijl, Mondrian and others but whilst maintaining a unique voice.

One of the most known pieces of Caspar David Driedrich. After a walk in the city, I ended up standing in front of this painting, observing the impossible landscape together with the figure in the center. In fact, it is almost clear that this landscape exist in the wild mind of the painter. That’s maybe one of the reasons, why we don’t see the face and the expression of the figure in the picture.

Nadine van Veldhuizen created a strong tension between the different parts of the sculpture. She posed the body in a position which might be unbearable for a regular people. At the same time she combined different materials which divided the body into areas.  The relations between the materials, their structure and colors add to the tension between the sculpture parts and increase the tension between the art work and the viewer.

It was a special experience to be part of the magic of Goof Kloosterman. First, you have to look and find where the magic is hidden.  When you discover it, be patient and slowly through the installation the magic will come up. Blurred shapes become clear and like a ghost forms are shaped to a clear picture. After a second, it all disappears and it looks like nothing had happened a minute ago!  

When Constant Nieuwenhuys was born, Vladimir Tatlin showed the wooden model of The Monument to the Third International (1920) for first time. It is not clear if Nieuwenhuys was inspired by this ideological monument, but you can see that the main element symbolized the endless time in both of their works. In Tatlin’s, the endless time is in endless spiral; in Nieuwenhuys’s it is the red petal in this Mechanical Flower.

This colorful pattern made of sticky paper was on the floor of the gallery. Job Wouters, inspired by what he saw in the mosque, created a temporary mosaic. For a moment I thought he had created pattern of pixels, a kind of barcode; that maybe I should scan this code with my smartphone and I would receive more information about it.

In his broad series, Paul Cézanne painted again and again the Montagne Sainte-Victoire. The essence of his series was to understaned the meaning of nature. The combination of the colors he used, shows the contrast between the light and the shadows, and at the same time shapes the existing forms of the mountain. In Doorson’s drawing, the essence is the upward-looking head with its tightly closed lips. Although, like Cézanne, he uses the color to create contrast between the light and the shadows, in Doorsen’s case, the drama is in the gesture itself.

Amongst other things, the work of Kristof Kintera reminded me the Encyclopedic Palace of Marino Auriti, a building which planed to contain the world's knowledge! The model of this idea was the central piece of the Venice Biënnale 2013. This book tower of Kintera, like the utopian dream of Auriti, strives to contain and represent the world's knowledge in its entirety. How naïve we are!

A solo exhibition of Waldemar Zimbelmann with real paintings. By real I mean having the need to stand in front of each one for few minutes; admiring the atmosphere which is created by the lines that stretch the perspective and the mix of different kinds of paint in multiple layers. It took me some time to find the body parts of the figures so I could understand the relations between them. No doubt, their Russian Madonna icon-faces were the most engaging part of the paintings.

Giovanni Giaretta photographed an ancient bronze  mirror that became opaque and  lost its function. By printing the negative of the photo, the artist has given back the mirror its ability  – to obsorb and reflct light.

A still from If We Ever Get to Heaven by William Kentridge is on the sugar bags in the EYE restaurant. After Kentridge tried every possible artistic media – like opera, dance, theater and films – it seems as if the sugar bags are a new way for him to demonstrate his art through.

In his work, Matthew Day Jackson relates mostly to the American folklore and history. With this piece he invites each one of us to be part of the painting, of a scene: fighting demons and various monsters, a nightmare for each one of us.  

What we see is what remained from the performance of Valerie Oka. In the cage she uncovered herself naked again and again out of the red textile.  Once in a while she walked naked in the cage showing us that the white penis is not threatening her anymore. Which cannot be said about the white man who still threatens the black continent.

Daniel Schwartz created work that justified the name of the event: Disclosing. In the first phase, he built a light installation spread on the floor without clear edges. In the second phase, it became a performance with Schwartz excavating what was hidden in the cube and disclosed the light. The remains on the floor were the third phase: when you reveal a hidden story, some parts can become ruins and some parts become illuminated.

In the drawing of The Pieta by  Berlinde de Bruyckere, aquarel is combined with pencil. The soft colors of the aquarel create the silhouette of the bodies while the pencil's aggressive lines create the endless dark that envelopes the act.

In the significant exhibition 'The Stedelijk Museum and the Second WW', this work presents the tragedy of the war. This painting, from the museum collection, was lent to Nazi leaders stationed in Amsterdam to decorate their walls. What makes it tragic is the fact that the painter, Else Berg, was murdered in Auschiwitz two years earlier by the Nazis.

Eddo Hartmann photographed Mansu Hill in No​r​th Korea. As times pass people experience changes, some more difficult than others. But the leaders, like in these sculptures, will remain smiling. Always.

The Museum of Everything is an amazing exhibition! To put a group of art works of each artist strengthens the presentation of each piece. Looking at these two pieces, I could feel the tortured world of the artist. Who, unfortunately, will stay anonymous for me since there was no label next to it.
Maybe he\she is lucky…in the whole exhibition not one label hung straight. Each one on a different height, sometimes the English text at the top and sometimes at the bottom. A pity that this part was not as serious as the exhibition itself.       

Gaugin's two Tahitian women posing naturally in the desert landscape. Not only through the colors but also because of the body postures, the figures and landscape create an obvious moment. Tammam Azam juxtaposes the history of art with the Syrian landscape he grew up in.

Since windows in chruches have always had the role of visualising stories, screening faces of actors on the windows of Oudekerk and listening to their stories feels very natural. A great video art work of Tony Oursler.

In simple lines Emanuel Engelen describes the room where he organizes diagrams that analyze his relationships. These diagrams were developed in the 18th century as table games to rate social behavior and emotional contact. Artist father's voice heard in the background, explaining the game and describing the artist actions. A touching and sincere art work that reflects the complicated relationship between a father and son.

Light is coming out from this painting. Although it was done in the late 60’ies, exactly those during years when Mark Rothko was in deep depression.

In such a serious competition like de Volkskrant Art Award 2015, I discovered this humoristic work . The artist Bran De Jonghe used an old hammer and added an ear as a natural organ of it. Like other works of the artist in this exhibition, his combination of different elements raises rhetorical questions about useless functions.

A chapel for Maradona, the football champion, with his photo in the middle surrounded by the  Pope and other saints. Maradona as an idol and football as a religion are part of the exhibition:  ‘Football Hallelujah!’. Football and the history of Amsterdam, rituals, differences between people and what connects them – all these topics and more are part of the exhibition.
My son and his friend ( young teenagers) were fascinated by the stories about football and understood  the power of history and religion.