Favourite things update 2

One of my favourite artists in The Hague, Navid Nuur is still taking part in the exhibition ‘Up to you’ at Stroom HCBK in The Hague together with designer Thomas Lommée and architect Yona Friedman (until 28 March). He seems to be quite busy these days as a solo exhibition (called “The value of void”) of his work will open at De Hallen in Haarlem on 20 March. A comprehensive catalogue will be presented in co-operation with the Fridericianum in Kassel and the S.M.A.K. in Ghent. Can’t wait to go there...

In The Hague at the Gemeentemuseum is at present the marvellous exhibition “Kandinsky en Der Blaue Reiter” (Kandinsky and The Blue Ryder) with pre WW I works by Kandinsky, Marc, Macke and Campendonk amongst others. New to me are works by Kandinsky’s friend Gabriele Münter. To me Kandinsky’s pre WW I work is his most interesting. And over all the Blue Ryder period is one of the most inspiring periods in Western art. It is full of youthful energy and colourful painting and there are some real great masterworks to be seen (until 24 May).

Artist Hoshyar Rasheed, originally from Iraki Kurdistan, is living and working in The Netherlands since the beginning of the 1990’s. His works are both colourful and wistful. The colour fields in his works seem to contain different worlds that can’t exist without each other. An exhibition of his works will be opened at Beemster Art Centre, Amsterdam on 26 February. Details here.

Browsing and surfing the web makes you sometimes run, or rather fly into surprising things. Not in the least into the relatively new web log of my colleague Roeland Zijlstra. Didn’t hear from/about him for years. Take a look at his wonderful portraits and conclude that average people don’t exist.

A site i regularly visit is Ubuweb. A site full of voices, music and movies from the world of modern and recent art, literature, music, etc. New features are regularly uploaded. Recently i saw Larry Jordan’s short animation Hamfat Asar here. Take a look and take a look again, and again, and again. Added to the Ubu collection are boxes of the Aspen magazine of the 1960’s. Read here what Aspen was all about. And take e.g. the recently added numbers 5 and 6, full of modern music, poetry and films. Or in edition nr. 2  – less modern - hear Scriabin’s 10th piano sonata played by Daniel Kunin here or here. Scriabin epitomizes the idea of the sublime in 19th century romanticism. And sounding quite 20th century by doing so. Well, wasn’t the 20th century but an extreme continuation of 19th century romanticism?
I am really waiting for a magazine like Aspen in this (post)modern age. Aren’t we already living in future?



I also ran into the website of Roa, a Belgian graffiti artist based in Ghent. See for yourself in this short Youtube video. Or go to Youtube here.

VLR