Benoît Hermans - He read it & chanted it rhythmed it, 2024
Collage 60 x 90 cm
Benoît Hermans - He Sang It & Chanted It Rhythmed It
15 February - 22 March 2024
Opening Saturday 15 February 2025 4-7 pm
It has been eleven years since Benoît Hermans’ last exhibition in Amsterdam, and the Suzanne Biederberg Gallery is now proud to present his most recent collage works in a solo exhibition.
Against the postmodern collage of “anything goes” and cultural relativism, Hermans contrasts collages that play into the cultural historical diversity that has underpinned art for centuries. The starting point is not zapping, sampling, or citing, but the cultural upheavals and the stylistic breaks that occurred between—for example—the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, and between Baroque and Classicism.
What happens if you confront an Impressionist work with a Romanesque one and the two together with something modern? In other words, what if the fragments are not exclusively citations but instead are taken seriously as competing image constructions? How to arrange the image in such a way as to lead the viewer to think about art history and, as they look at the work, while at the same time to give them plenty of space to develop new perspectives from a pre-modern view of art?
Hermans uses collage in a refreshing and dadaistic manner to address the history of art while adding a cultural historical dimension to contemporary controversies. But his works also raise the question as to whether certain art-historical clichés should not be revised.
As Rudi Fuchs advises upon viewing Hermans’ works, “…read and taste them with lingering eyes. For once a work is finished, there is much to see, and it is up to the viewer to make sure that he/she does see it all.” (From the 2007 monograph “Benoît Hermans: Objets troublants, Objets troublés” – available for sale at the gallery.)
Benoît Hermans lives and works in Maastricht and graduated from the Jan van Eyck Akademie in 1991. He studied art and philosophy there from 1992 to 1994. His work has been exhibited widely nationally and internationally and is in many important collections.
At the opening, Ad Himmelreich, former curator of the Bonnefanten Museum, Maastricht, will contribute a recent text on Herman’s work.
For more information or press material, please contact the gallery.
Against the postmodern collage of “anything goes” and cultural relativism, Hermans contrasts collages that play into the cultural historical diversity that has underpinned art for centuries. The starting point is not zapping, sampling, or citing, but the cultural upheavals and the stylistic breaks that occurred between—for example—the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, and between Baroque and Classicism.
What happens if you confront an Impressionist work with a Romanesque one and the two together with something modern? In other words, what if the fragments are not exclusively citations but instead are taken seriously as competing image constructions? How to arrange the image in such a way as to lead the viewer to think about art history and, as they look at the work, while at the same time to give them plenty of space to develop new perspectives from a pre-modern view of art?
Hermans uses collage in a refreshing and dadaistic manner to address the history of art while adding a cultural historical dimension to contemporary controversies. But his works also raise the question as to whether certain art-historical clichés should not be revised.
As Rudi Fuchs advises upon viewing Hermans’ works, “…read and taste them with lingering eyes. For once a work is finished, there is much to see, and it is up to the viewer to make sure that he/she does see it all.” (From the 2007 monograph “Benoît Hermans: Objets troublants, Objets troublés” – available for sale at the gallery.)
Benoît Hermans lives and works in Maastricht and graduated from the Jan van Eyck Akademie in 1991. He studied art and philosophy there from 1992 to 1994. His work has been exhibited widely nationally and internationally and is in many important collections.
At the opening, Ad Himmelreich, former curator of the Bonnefanten Museum, Maastricht, will contribute a recent text on Herman’s work.
For more information or press material, please contact the gallery.