Kasper Bosmans / Richard Tuttle / Evelyn Taocheng Wang

De Hallen Haarlem kicks off the new year with three solo exhibitions, by Kasper Bosmans, Richard Tuttle and Evelyn Taocheng Wang. Poetry, beauty and elegance—notions that have grown increasingly problematic with the waning of “modernist autonomy” in art—play an important role in these artists’ approach. Their work is rooted in history and tradition and permanently oscillates between “then” and “now.” Moreover, all three artists have a special interest in the expressive possibilities of specific materials, which endows their work with a great tactile sensitivity.

Tuttle focuses on the unforeseen expressiveness of small gestures and simple materials, in a formal idiom that some might describe as poetic-minimalist. In the work of Wang and Bosmans, both a penchant for the decadent as well as craft and folk art is discernible. They intuitively draw on diverse historical, literary and scientific sources, and weave expressions from various cultural traditions into idiosyncratic narratives.

With the exhibitions of Bosmans and Wang, Xander Karskens concludes his curatorship at the museum and takes up his position as Artistic Director of the Cobra museum. In the past decade he has given the contemporary art programme of the museum a razor-sharp profile and international élan.

Richard Tuttle
The minimal, sensitive and sometimes sensual gesture: that is the trademark of American artist Richard Tuttle (Rahway, New Jersey, 1941). With a small number of “poor” materials—from paper and cardboard to thread and textile—he creates sculptures and paintings that speak a thousand wordless languages. Those who know no better would call Tuttle a formalist. His oeuvre, however, is permeated with the fact that art can be “nourishment” for one’s inner life. For the historical Vleeshal on the Grote Markt, Tuttle is developing new ceiling sculptures that indirectly respond to the history of 17th century Haarlem, the Dutch city where damask, silk and silver of the highest quality were produced.

Artist talk: January 20, 5–6pm
Conversation between Tuttle and director-curator of Mu.ZEE, Phillip Vandenbossche

Evelyn Taocheng Wang: Allegory of Transience
The first solo museum exhibition of Chinese artist Evelyn Taocheng Wang (Chengdu, 1981) is based upon her fascination for Dutch painting from the Golden Age. During her childhood in China, this Dutch art functioned as a pars pro toto for the entire history of Western art. Wang connects personal memories and fantasies to larger themes, such as cultural and sexual identity and exoticism, and develops these themes in performances, paintings and videos. In Allegory of Transience the artist reflects on the history of Haarlem as a place for innovation in 17th century painting. She does this on the basis of the representation of the human body and clichés surrounding the male gaze. A new video work will situate this theme in several locations such as “Hofjes” (courtyards) in and around Haarlem that are historically associated with gender categories.

Wang extends her domain into the Frans Hals Museum, where she casts an exoticizing glance at the Dutch Wadden Islands with the video series “A Home Made Travel MV Series,” as part of the ongoing series “New & Old.” On view from March 25 to August 20, 2017.

Performance: March 24

Kasper Bosmans: The Words and Days (mud gezaaid, free range)
The Belgian artist Kasper Bosmans (Lommel, 1990) creates mysteriously elegant objects and paintings in which he intuitively combines his interest in local folklore and socio-historical anecdotes with the symbolic potential of materials. Like an artistic anthropologist, Bosmans combines stories and legends from different cultural and historical contexts in an associative manner and blends them into speculative new mythologies for our demystified world. In this exhibition, Bosmans explores the iconographic histories of the ibis and the crane and their connection to power and class in a new series of sculptures and paintings.