Yesterday we visited the opening of Art Rotterdam 2019 and wanted to bring you a selection of some of the favorite works and booths selected by mostly local galleries from The Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany, along with a couple of other international representatives. The 20th edition of the fair hosted in the Van Nelle Factory, a UNESCO World Heritage Site that also included a big section of works by young artists selected by the Mondriaan Fund, a projection space, and a specially curated central point with large works.
With a clear focus on young artists, the show included a large variety of different types, scales, techniques, and mediums. Some of our favorites included the dark, outdoor-inspired images by Canadian Kim Dorland, as well as haunting, sepia-toned realistic portraitures by John Robinson. We got to check out the striking collages by Spanish Carlos Aires, who is making clever connections between money and the atrocities done in the name of it, as well as beautifully rendered interiors by his fellow countryman Carlos Segrera. Famed Dutch director Alex van Warmerdam introduced new works from his Tronies series, and his much younger country fellowman Niek Hendrix displayed a new body of life snapshots rendered in oil and displayed in unusual groupings, regularly accompanied by an object such as an aquarium. Polish Paola Ciarska presented a series of miniature works that portray the solitary life of technology-dependant women and Ulla Stina Wikander introduced a new selection of her signature cross-stitch enwrapped objects. One of the showstopper pieces of the fair was surely Elias Sima's large mosaic-like piece entirely constructed from technological waste, as was Bes De Wit's quirky sculpture on view at the central Now and Forever section.––Sasha Bogojev
Photos by Sasha Bogojev
