From 10 April to 2 October 2016 Panorama Mesdag will be exhibiting an installation by Zeger Reyers and Pietertje van Splunter. Together with the new video work Ringdijk by Gerco de Ruijter and earlier ones by Reyers, the exhibition adds a surprising new dimension to the panorama genre.
The exhibition Panorama Continuüm (2016) is being devised especially for the 19th-century rooms of Panorama Mesdag museum. Perceptions of light, space and time are at the heart of the installation by Reyers and Van Splunter. The museum is combining this show and Ringdijk with De Ruijter’s panoramic landscape photographs.
The Dutch artist Zeger Reyers (b. 1966) established his reputation with intriguing installations such as Drum Kit (2004), Aqua Boogie (2004), and Rotating Kitchen (2009). In 2007 the municipality of The Hague awarded him the Ouborg prize for his entire oeuvre. Reyers recently made a strong impression with his installation Free Floating Tree (2015) as part of the exhibition Expedition Land Art in Kunsthal KAdE, Amersfoort. He also mentors and advises young artists through the institute Mediamatic Art & New Technology. See www.zeger.org
The Dutch landscape photographer Gerco de Ruijter (b. 1961) hangs his camera from a kite. As a result, the horizon is often absent, leading to enigmatic abstractions. Some of his photographs were currently on display in the show Farming Folk at the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag in The Hague. The journalist Tracy Metz recently described his photographs as pure beauty (http://www.tracymetz.nl/category/artikelen/).
A few weeks ago the book Almost Nature was published, a retrospective of Gerco de Ruijter’s work (Timmer Art Books, ISBN 978-94-6226-163-1); see www.gercoderuijter.com
Since 2004 Zeger Reyers has frequently collaborated with the Dutch artist Pietertje van Splunter (b. 1968) under the name Broos Collective. Van Splunter’s work was on view at last year’s Biennale in Venice; see www.pietertje.net. Rob Bothof is responsible for the animations used in the installation.
The exhibition Panorama Continuüm (2016) was commissioned by Panorama Mesdag and produced with the support of the Mondrian Fund. The exhibition will be opened on Saturday 9 April by the art critic Sandra Smallenburg.
Panorama Mesdag offers visitors a programme of surprising exhibitions. The panorama genre dates back to 1785, when it was invented and patented by Robert Barker. It was a new method of depicting reality through an optical illusion, based on a number of criteria that Barker defined in his patent.
