ALEX VAN WARMERDAM

The paintings included feature figures in landscapes or interiors, alone or with company—some in full-length, others only their heads. These figures, or apparitions, often seem foreign to their environment. Their bodies are often too large for the spaces from which they emerge. A few are awkwardly proportioned, their limbs out of size to the rest of their bodies, and depicted from unnatural perspectives.

Van Warmerdam uses images he has been collecting for decades as the basis for the figures. People and characters found in books or on the internet, interiors and landscapes from old magazines or drawn from his personal photographic archive. The artist prefers images that he finds both picturesque and open to interpretation. Van Warmerdam prefers elements that he can interpret freely; to underscore, to obscure or both in terms of colour, form, and composition.

The small portraits in the exhibition are referred to by Van Warmerdam as ‘tronies.’ In the Netherlands a tronie refers to a portrait study of a nameless model, which were especially popular during the Dutch Golden Age. The paintings are not intended to accurately depict the sitter, instead they are used as studies of facial expressions and states of mind. The basis for the paintings could be of a politician, a murderer, or a farm girl, but Van Warmerdam attempts to forget their identity as quickly as possible. Instead, he is concerned with the look of the face and the unrealistic colours he applies.

In the downstairs gallery, Van Warmderdam presents two video installations previously shown during his exhibition at the Eye Filmmuseum in Amsterdam (NL). The mobility of thought becomes visible in the stop-motion film of an ever-changing painting. The work, Creatures of the Forest, shows a stream of images of people, animals, plants, landscapes, and interiors, which flow into each other. Each new image builds on the previous one. It is a film about painting itself.

About the artist

Alex van Warmerdam (b. 1952 in Haarlem, NL) studied painting and printing at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam (NL). After graduating in 1974 he started his first theater company that later became the famed ‘Orkater’ and subsequently ‘De Mexicaanse Hond’. Van Warmerdam has won many awards for his work in literature, theater and film, including the Palme d’Or nomination for his film Borgman. In 2010 his multidisciplinary work was the subject of a solo exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum, Schiedam (NL) and in 2018 the EYE Filmmuseum, Amsterdam (NL) presented his retrospective exhibition titled l’Histoire Kaputt. Van Warmerdam was awarded the Prins Bernhard Cultuur Prize for Theatre as well as the Johannes Vermeer Prize for his entire oeuvre. In September 2021, the artist released his tenth movie, titled Nr. 10.

Selected exhibitions include Out of poverty * Art, history and stories, Stedelijk Museum, Schiedam (NL), 2024; Verschijningen, GRIMM, Amsterdam (NL), 2021; Inaugural exhibition, GRIMM, New York, NY (US), 2021; Diepgeworteld, Bomen in de Nederlandse schilderkunst, Dordrechts Museum, Dordrecht (NL), 2020; and Tronies, GRIMM, Amsterdam (NL), 2018.

His work is included in the collections of EYE Filmmuseum, Amsterdam (NL); Museum Voorlinden, Wassenaar (NL); and the Stedelijk Museum, Schiedam (NL), among others.