Marlene Dumas with Jan Andriesse

The Stedelijk Museum is pleased to invite you to a new series of Gallery Talks based on the exhibition Marlene Dumas: The Image as Burden. During these tours, visitors will view a selection of works with artists, art historians, and academics, who will discuss them on the basis of their own interests, expertise, and research. New, and above all, personal reflections on Dumas’ oeuvre will transcend the thematic lines of the exhibition and provide a new perspective on it. 

All the speakers in this series have some sort of connection with Marlene Dumas. Alied Ottevanger (curator at the Central Museum Utrecht) was the first to recognize Dumas’ talent in a review in 1981, Leontine Coelewij (curator of contemporary arts at the Stedelijk Museum) is the curator of the exhibition, Ena Jansen (professor of literature at the Free University of Amsterdam) specializes in South African art and literature, and Jan Andriesse (artist) is Dumas’ partner.

MORE ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Jan Andriesse is an artist who has known Marlene Dumas since the 1980s, when she came to the Netherlands for her residency at de Ateliers in Amsterdam. As an artist, Andriesse is well known for his poetic paintings, sculptures, and drawings, with titles such as It's been a Long Time Comin' 1, 1/2, 1/3, 1/4 (1975) and There Ain’t Any There (2001), in which he plays with water and light in a clear and apparently simple way. Although his paintings seem to be abstract, the flow of a river or the light of a sunrise or sunset is reflected in every line, every curve, and every patch of color. His work has been collected by museums including the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and the Pont in Tilburg. Andriesse was curator of several exhibtions such as Schemering – tussen licht en donker (Museum Jan Cunen, 1996-1997) and J.H. Weissenbruch (Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, 2000). And, as a filmmaker, he was co-producer of the documentary Hollands Licht (2003) and the film Torrentius (2013) about the 17th century painter Johannes Torrentius.
His critical view of art is every bit as clear as his own artistic practice. Andriesse has a wealth of knowledge about national and international painting which he has acquired during his own work as an artist and as a result of discussions with friends working in the arts. For example, he collected the letters and texts of friends (art connoisseurs and artists) in the publication Kitsch unedited (2006), including writings by Barbara Bloom, Rudi Fuchs, Luc Tuymans, and Marijke van Warmerdam. During his Gallery Talk in the Stedelijk Museum he will guide a select group on a tour through the exhibition Marlene Dumas: The Image as Burden