(c) Annelien Dam
(c) Daniëlle Spoelman
(c) Judith Schepers

Other Places Annelien Dam, Judith Schepers and Daniëlle Spoelman

Other Places is a joint exhibition of Annelien Dam, Judith Schepers and Danielle Spoelman. In this multi-solo exhibition they show their images from different perspectives on the other place

At Judith Schepers' work this place is often the forest where the finely drawn trees are very attractive but in which there is always a threatening feeling. According to her, the forest is not only sweet but can also be dark and hard. 

Annelien Dam focuses on people in the urban environment. This space offers security, but the empty quiet streets suggest that this is at the same time a false safety. 

Danielle Spoelman explores the relationship between man and the natural environment in this exhibition. In fairytale-like images, humans and animals seem to be taken up in the woody environment while in fact they hardly seem aware of each other. 

All these Other Places tell us contradictory stories. What does our environment tell us, how do we see and what relationships do we really have with these places? Three different artists who often work on paper but use very diverse techniques from stencil printing, fine drawing to colorful gouache. Other places invites you to look outside with a different view. 

The opening by writer, poet, translator, journalist and photographer Ernst Bergboer, in presence of the artists, will take place on Thursday 28 March at 4.30 pm. 

About the artists

Annelien Dam is in her work looking at humans in their own environment. A recurring theme is urban reality. She uses this subject on the one hand because of the love for the formal and visual qualities, the buildings and the architecture. On the other hand, it has to do with people in the urban environment. The streets and spaces are full of static stationary buildings, between them people and vehicles move. Although space is static, people often have no idea what is going on in all those buildings and around the corners. The security between the buildings in an urban environment is a false security. At the same time, people also relate to each other. Man is capable of merging into a crowd and filling the city with life. Those people will disassociate and withdraw as individuals back into their own buildings. And then the alienation and the stillness of the city comes into being. 

Judith Schepers makes drawings and installations. The basis for her drawings are trips through the forest, stories and myths. Then follows a trip through her own psyche. Her sculptures arise somewhere in the back of her head, where they may mature for a while before they are put on paper. She creates a world in black and white, with very occasional drops of color and draws, among other things, forests, birds and portraits. She is currently investigating the color black, which is not actually a color, but an entity that absorbs the light and transforms it into something else. Black does not reflect, but absorbs. In nature, almost nothing is really black, unless it has been charred by flames. In her woods she places black surfaces, like dark elements from another world. 

Danielle Spoelman often uses different materials at the same time in her work; pencil, ink, markers and paint come back regularly. Lately she likes to work with acrylic gouache, a water-resistant, opaque matte paint with which she can work well in layers. In her colorful, narrative images, she investigates what we are aware of or not aware of. She tries to stretch the boundaries of consciousness and examine what the stories of our lives are. In the Mystic Forest series she shows images of fantasy landscapes in which humans and animals appear to be included in the whole. We are largely ignorant of life in the forest, but barely understand how trees, plant kingdoms and animals live together. We often look fragmentary as if we were taking snapshots, a branch here, a bird there, but she notices that in the forest we feel connected to a deeper level. Danielle Spoelman wants to investigate this unconscious connection in this series. By showing this in an attractive fairytale way, she invites the viewer to join this research.