Room with a view

Bouwfonds has been collecting works of art for the last 30 years and now owns one of the foremost corporate art collections in the Netherlands. The exhibition in the Gemeentemuseum will concentrate on outstanding acquisitions of the last ten years. It will include works by artists of the calibre of Steven Aalders, Ricardo Brey, Tony Cragg, René Daniëls, Joris Geurts, Juan Muñoz, Jan Roeland, JCJ Vanderheyden, Carel Visser and Co Westerik.

The Bouwfonds Art Collection gives a good impression of major Dutch and international developments in the visual arts over recent decades. Its key focus is on painting and the main period is 1970 to the present. A unique feature is the sub-collection of work by Latin-American and southern European artists, including Miguel-Angel Cárdenas, Julio Galán, Guillermo Kuitca, Carmen Calvo, Sandro Chia and Mimmo Paladino. Artists from various other movements are also represented. For example, Fundamental Painting movement is represented by artists such as Ben Akkerman, Jan Schoonhoven, Toon Verhoef and Marthe Wéry and ‘Radical Painting’ by the abstract geometrical works of Alan Uglow and Gunther Förg. New Figuration is also a clear presence, with work by artists like Lucassen, Raoul De Keyser and Roger Raveel. This exhibition will also include work by a younger generation of artists inspired by these movements. They include Antoine Berghs, Koen Delaere, Antonietta Peeters and Sophia Schama. In parallel to the painting collection, the Bouwfonds has also built up a smaller-scale collection of sculpture. The highpoints in this area are works by Leo Vroegindeweij, André Volten and Barry Flanagan. The Bouwfonds Art Collection also includes photography, with pictures by Beate Gütshow, Dirk Braeckman, Andreas Gefeller and Elger Esser. Another – comparatively new – area of collecting is ceramics; this will also be well reflected in the exhibition. Especially for this exhibition, Hague artist Zeger Reyers is to recreate his 2003 installation ‘Hard Water’: a vast wall of Mosa porcelain, restructured in a completely new way for this occasion.

The exhibition will coincide with the publication of a book entitled Room with a View, concerning the Bouwfonds Art Collection’s collecting activities over the last ten years. Available only in the Gemeentemuseum shop, the book will contain pictures by photographer Theo Baart recording the peculiar tension between art and industry. The Bouwfonds Art Collection has been exhibited in the past at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (1989) and the Boymans van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam (1996).

Presestext

Room with a view
The Bouwfonds Art Collection

mit Steven Aalders, Dirk Braeckman, Ricardo Brey, Tony Cragg, René Daniëls, Elger Esser, Andreas Gefeller, Joris Geurts, Beate Gütschow, Juan Muñoz, Jan Roeland, JCJ Vanderheyden, Carel Visser, Co Westerik ...