During the second edition of NAP+, the new Dutch fair for contemporary art, m.simons presents the work of Tim Mathijsen. His oeuvre takes center stage, complemented by new works by Tim Ayres, Bernice Nauta, and Kristoffer Zeiner.
Tim Mathijsen’s practice revolves around the principle of copying. While this theme was already a frequent subject of debate in the twentieth century, it takes on new significance today. With the rise of artificial intelligence and the role of companies such as Google and WeTransfer, issues surrounding authorship and appropriation have once again come into focus. The presentation includes works from the past five years, encompassing both unique pieces and editions. In recent projects, Mathijsen burned illustrations from old comic books into glass plates, used drawings by Joost Krijnen in a fresco technique – whereby the originals were lost – and created a bronze cast of a tobacco leaf, a plant with a charged cultural and economic history.
Tim Ayres presents new work on a new support. On aluminum panels he painted words and short sentences with loose brushstrokes. Unlike his earlier canvases, in which he employed typefaces, the emphasis here lies on handwriting. The placement and shape of the individual letters determine the composition and rhythm of the pictorial surface.
The new drawings by Bernice Nauta stem from her recent care for city pigeons. These birds, descended from breeds once domesticated by humans, are unable to free themselves from strands of hair that wrap around their feet. Nauta removes these threads and helps the animals recover. In her drawings she gives form to the complex relationship between human and pigeon, where care, dependency, and disruption intertwine.
Over the past summer, Kristoffer Zeiner has worked on new large-scale canvases in which figuration and abstraction alternate. His recent paintings place more emphasis on surface, brushwork, and color contrasts than earlier series. For NAP+ m.simons presents a work measuring 200 x 130 cm, in which purple, green, and yellow forms float and elude a singular definition.
