Days of Inertia Group Show

Overview
Days of Inertia, Group Show
d'Ouwe Kerke
Dorpsstraat 16
4525 AH Retranchement
The Netherlands

Alma Allen, Nina Canell, Michael Dean, Patricia Leite, Marina Perez Simão and Kishio Suga.

Mendes Wood DM is returning to the Dutch seaside for its second summer exhibition in the 17th-century church of the idyllic village of Retranchement, on the border with Belgium. The space is just a short bicycle ride away from Knokke, Belgium’s famed beach resort in which galleries and institutions organise cultural events throughout the summer months.

Days of Inertia presents an array of works by artists from the gallery’s program. The group show takes its name from a sculpture by the Swedish artist Nina Canell, conceived especially for this project. Other iterations of Days of Inertia have been presented before at Punta Della Dogana, SMAK Ghent and Centre d'art contemporain d’Ivry, Crédac. Simultaneously to the show in Retranchement, Canell has also created a newly commissioned work for Into Nature, a biennial of visual arts set in a natural reserve in the region of Drenthe, the Netherlands.

Sculpture and installation are a prominent theme in the exhibition, which extends also outside the church, where another work by Canell, Otic Pit, will be in conversation with Mortal, a large new concrete and pigment sculpture by the British artist Michael Dean. A solo show of Dean’s work is currently running at Mendes Wood DM’s Brussels gallery space and he is also featured in the Watou Arts Festival, in Belgium. Meanwhile, the American artist Alma Allen, who will present his first European solo exhibition at Mendes Wood DM Brussels in September, as well as in the city’s Museum Van Buuren, has a series of small sculptures installed indoors. Their organic forms, realized in bronze, marble and obsidian, are in dialogue with the geometries and material dichotomies of the Japanese artist Kishio Suga’s wood sculptures.

The exhibition Days of Inertia also includes works by two of the gallery’s prominent Brazilian artists, Marina Perez Simão and Patricia Leite. In addition to large oil paintings, Simão is presenting a recent series of delicate watercolours that provide the viewer with a new entry point into her technicolour landscapes. The landscape motif is continued in a totally different key with Leite’s new large-scale, immersive, thick oil-on-wood compositions inspired by the nature of her native country.
Works
Installation Views
Back to exhibitions