Last week: JASPER DE BEIJER at AGG (Solo show)
Go to the online viewing room HERE
Review on Hyperallergic
“In “Brigadier” (C-Print, 39.37 by 52.76 inches, 2019), de Beijer has photographed a headless figure lying on a bed that appears to be outside. The shutters on the window behind him are geometrically divided into four triangles, echoing the emblem on the containers in “Refinery.” The brigadier’s uniform and skin have been brought into clarity by the highly detailed, printed surface that de Beijer has applied to his carefully built-up volumetric form.
The fact that we see his calves, a hand, and a forearm, but that he is headless, is strange and unsettling, especially as the artist has placed a hat above the empty collar, supported by what looks like a crooked stick rising up from the back of the empty uniform. In fact, there are no faces in the photographs, only empty uniforms. “Brigadier” is downright weird, oddly funny, somewhat creepy, and unnerving.
Why can’t we see the Brigadier’s face? Is he a surrogate for one part of Dutch history, at once visible and gone? What is the present’s relationship to the past? Aren’t different nations at a crucial juncture as they try to shape and reshape their bonds with the past? These are issues that de Beijer makes visible without becoming didactic. That he moves so nimbly from one subject to another — from a refinery to a brigadier lying in bed to a night sky lit up by glowing paths culminating in explosions that reveal the land plantations and slave huts below — is what convinced me that he is a major artist whose challenging work should be better known in America.”
Jasper de Beijer and Asya Geisberg discuss the artist’s latest photography series “The Admiral’s Headache”, on view at the gallery through May 15, 2021. Directly from his studio in Amsterdam, De Beijer shows examples of his paper models and background material, and explains his ideas, research, and process behind the series.
The photographs in “The Admiral’s Headache” reference 18th-century hand-colored engravings. From a distance, these photographs look like seamless colonial paintings, but up close the tell-tale clues of the cut paper reveal themselves. The new series expands on the artist’s familiar themes of Dutch colonialism and the way that the media romanticizes, simplifies and conflates history and cultural attitudes.
Watch the studio visit HERE
Sketch for ‘Brigadier’ from ‘The Admiral’s Headache’
ASYA GEISBERG GALLERY
To reserve a viewing time, click HERE or email INFO@
537B West 23rd Street
New York, NY 10011
Tel: 212 – 675 – 7525
Email: info@
Hours: Tues-Sat, 11-6pm
Asya Geisberg Gallery accepts payment plans offered by ART MONEY.
