meet the modern masters - allard van hoorn

AMSTERDAM

M E E T T H E M O D E R N M A S T E R S

Amsterdam’s art scene is so much more than Rembrandt and Van Gogh. And right now, it's time for a new generation of artists to take centre stage...

Words MARK SMITH Photography MARCUS KOPPEN

For some years now, visitors strolling across Amsterdam’s Museumplein – the manicured expanse of grass bordered by some of the world’s most revered art institutions – must have

wondered what on earth was going on. Alongside the grand Rijksmuseum and the revered Concertgebouw concert hall, a mammoth, eye-popping, white structure was taking shape under an enormous tarpaulin. To some, it resembled an outsized piece of Tupperware scattered by some picnicking giant; to others, it looked like an enormous domestic bath. Unsurprisingly, it was the latter nickname that stuck.

With the unveiling of its bathtub – aka, the extension to the Stedelijk Museum – last month, Amsterdam became the proud owner of a world class, 21st-century art museum. Like Paris’s inside-out Pompidou Centre or the twisted titanium weirdscape of the Guggenheim in Bilbao, the structure is as

provocative as the works it contains. The largest open-plan gallery space in the Netherlands, it’s a building that can also now do justice to the collection’s enormous haul of work by artists such as Tracey Emin and Mark Rothko.

It couldn’t have come at a better time. The Stedelijk’s more famous neighbours – namely, the stately Golden Age treasure trove of the Rijksmuseum, with its awesome collection of Rembrandts, and the ever-popular Van Gogh Museum – are closed until 2013 for extensive renovations. This means that the city’s bleeding-edge contemporary art fi nally has an opportunity to emerge from the shadows of the long-dead painters who have defi ned Amsterdam’s artistic landscape for decades.

And take advantage of it they have. Right now, across the city, young artists are having what you might call a moment. They’re taking over galleries, warehouse spaces – even

DIS

CO

VER

IES V

IEW

PO

INTS F

EA

TU

RES B

USIN

ESS P

RO

PER

TY

DESTIN

ATIO

N G

UID

ES

TRAVELLER 57

056-062_ej_Amsterdam nl lg.indd 57056-062_ej_Amsterdam nl lg.indd 57 13/09/2012 15:0813/09/2012 15:08

58 TRAVELLER

Clockwise from left, plastic cutlery sculpture at the Tijdelijk Museum; Eva de Klerk, who created an art space in an abandoned shipyard in the Noord district; Sky Over Snæfel, by Allard van Hoorn; the Stedelijk Museum

empty walls. Some are hosting events, while others have turned their homes into exhibition spaces. In short, the city has put itself on the modern-art map like never before.

“The Netherlands in general and Amsterdam in particular have become important testing grounds for artists from around the world,” says Ann Goldstein, the Stedelijk’s American director. She sees Amsterdam today as a laboratory for the arts: schools, artist-in-residence programmes, galleries and alternative spaces are offering unparalleled opportunities for up-and-coming talent.

Goldstein has opened with Beyond Imagination, a headline exhibition of work by young contemporary artists who, although they hail from all over the world, have chosen Amsterdam as their base. “I think the city has always been open to new cultures and ideas,” says German-born video-artist Julika Rudelius, whose work appears in the show, “and that has to do with the city’s trading past.”

Across town, another big-name institution is pushing the boundaries for contemporary art. The reopened De Appel

Arts Centre disdains labels such as museum or gallery, but its glamorous new premises, a stone’s thrown from the city’s Central Station, showcases highly conceptual work by promising Dutch talents, including installation artist Allard van Hoorn. His Sky Over Snæfel, a massive, wall-mounted collection of eerily glowing bulbs, is a live abstraction of online images of the sky over an Icelandic volcano. Hauntingly beautiful, it is as inventive, in its own way, as the blazing landscapes of Van Gogh.

If all of this sounds a bit, well, obscure, then a new and completely different style of cultural curator could well prove to be your creative cup of tea. City-wide, a glut of unoccupied commercial premises – courtesy of the global fi nancial crisis – has given artists with really big ideas a whole new kind of canvas to play with.

Step forward the 60 Layers of Cake Foundation. This summer, it took over the vacant Overhoeks offi ce block across the IJ waterfront from Central Station to create the Tijdelijk Museum, an environmentally minded temporary landmark, incorporating beautiful, giant sculptures fashioned from household refuse. The entry price? Three empty plastic drinks bottles.

Co-producer Clarine van Karnebeek sees such waste-not-want-not initiatives as the modern-day successors to the famous Amsterdam squatting movement of the


Sky Over Snæfel is hauntingly beautiful, as inventive as the blazing landscapes of Van Gogh

AMSTERDAM


The Tijdelijk features giant sculptures from household refuse. Cost of entry? Three empty plastic bottles


1980s and 90s. Back then, artists would requisition vacant buildings without permission. Recent changes in legislation have effectively put an end to squatting, but the economic downturn – and the resulting dearth of public funds for art subsidies – have seen the city’s landowners, legislators and artists collaborating to make creative use of unoccupied wasteland.

“From being something quite depressing, these spaces are being transformed into welcoming and well-organised destinations for the arts. They’re bringing colour and creativity back to local communities. It’s a win-win situation,” says Van Karnebeek.

For confi rmation of this, visitors need look no further than the riot of paintings on the side of a disused tram shed in the Bellamybuurt in the Oud-West district (stadsboeren.org). Here, murals by respected street artists overlook a new community vegetable garden where, for a small fee, locals can grow their greens and everyone is welcome.

By all accounts, the blueprint for this sort of demand-driven project came from art-scene pioneer Eva de Klerk who, more than a decade ago, saw the potential in NDSM Werf, the wide-open spaces of an abandoned shipbuilding yard in Amsterdam’s post-industrial Noord district. She worked with local government and a troupe of unemployed artists to build Art City, a cavernous network of workshops where creatives – from theatrical set-builders to

conceptual artists – can give free rein to their ideas. Today, this once-rundown part of Amsterdam, accessible via the free ferry from behind Central Station, is home to a clutch of commercial spaces (among them the pioneering Nieuw Dakota), a host of hip media incomers such as MTV Europe and open-air music festivals.

Change needn’t always happen on such a grand scale. At the other end of the spectrum, savvy graphic designer Hansje van Halem recently made it onto Time Out Amsterdam’s A-list for her Schrank-8 initiative. Tired of staring at the 1930s cabinet in her living room that she’d inherited from her grandmother, she decided to open it up – quite literally – as a small but perfectly formed space for developing artists in need of a leg up.

Hosting a new exhibition every two months, Schrank-8 has been a cult hit online (schrank8.blogspot.com) and visitors are welcome by appointment. This month, Van Halem’s living room plays host to the multicoloured graphic work of the illustrator Viktor Hachmang, whose creations have been described as “stressfully good”.

Clockwise from right, rubbish recycled as art at the Tijdelijk Museum; household explorations at the NDSM Werf; artist

Thierry van Raaij at work at NDSM

AMSTERDAM

TRAVELLER 61


HOLLAND’S GOT TALENT

ROTTERDAMHousing works by

Rembrandt and Dalí, the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen (above;

boijmans.nl) aims to provide a comprehensive

survey of art from the early middle ages to the

21st century, in a stately redbrick

building designed by Van der Steur.

THE HAGUE

The Gem (gem-online.nl)lives up to its sparkler of a name, displaying

a wide variety of creative disciplines: video installations,

paintings, sculptures, multimedia, performance,

photography, design, digital art and drawings

by artists from the Netherlands and abroad. Solo exhibitions alternate

with group shows, intending to shed light on emerging trends in

contemporary art.

UTRECHTAlongside a large and

varied collection of Old Masters and exhibitions

on design, fashion and local history, the

Centraal Museum Utrecht (centraalmuseum.nl)

contains a broad survey of Dutch visual art of the 20th century, featuring

work by Mondrian’s colour-blocking

contemporaries Bart Van der Leck and Theo

van Doesburg, as well as the magic realists Koch, Willink and Moesman.

Van Gogh paintings hanging in his museum

The Exchange Hotel offers rooms designed by students at the Amsterdam Fashion Institute. Book online at hotels.easyJet.com

from 20 destinations. See our insider guide on page 126. Book online at easyJet.com

Museums in the city

Population of the city’s Noord district

AMSTERDAMNEED TO KNOW

easyJet FLIES TOAMSTERDAM

88,196

42

200

For those who’d prefer to see the spoils of Amsterdam’s contemporary-art renaissance displayed in the comfort of their own living room, this month’s Affordable Art Fair is an even more exciting prospect. Selling work with a price tag of up to €5,000, its stated aim is to open up Amsterdam’s art market by providing fi rst-time buyers with an unintimidating starting point. Many of the city’s most respected galleries will participate, away from the slick, white spaces of their daily premises.

“Last year was our most successful yet,” says Sebastiaan van Kuijk, the fair’s director, who brought the international concept to Amsterdam’s Westergasfabriek – a regenerated industrial zone bordering Westerpark – fi ve years ago. “Commercial used to be a dirty word on the city’s art scene but, because of the fi nancial crisis and cuts to public art institutions, that attitude is changing. We’ve already seen the average spend on an individual piece of art at the fair rise from the low hundreds to around the €4,000 mark, and we think that’s because our repeat visitors are getting more educated. Who knows? These people may go on to be the patrons of Amsterdam’s great art institutions of the future.”

Even the city’s established art afi cionados are keen to voice their enthusiasm for the upsurge in the modern movement. Ron Mandos (ronmandos.nl), whose gallery near the Museumplein hosts an annual best-of graduates show, says that he’s been able to attract a better class of artist because of the buzz created by institutions such as the Stedelijk and De Appel. “We’re hosting an exhibition by renowned British video installation artist Isaac Julien. I’m pretty sure that his interest was piqued by the prospect of exhibiting in a city that, in terms of contemporary art, has got its groove back.” Clearly, there’s never been a better time to get in the frame here.

AMSTERDAM

The Netherlands is well stocked

with modern-art institutions

Left, Hansje van Halem, whose Shrank- 8 project won praise from Time Out Amsterdam; below, gallery owner Ron Mandos is enjoying the buzz that modern art is giving the city

62 TRAVELLER


meet the modern masters - allard van hoorn

Documents