m.simons is proud to announce T.M.T.M, the first solo presentation by Tim Mathijsen in the gallery.
Tim Mathijsen’s (1987, NL) work exists in a continuous mode of reproduction. Since his graduation, his practice has been driven by the question of how forms, meanings, and stories come into being, shift, and reappear. A major part of this investigation unfolds through plaster – the in-between material par excellence. Traditionally used to hold a form temporarily in anticipation of its final manifestation in bronze or marble, plaster is never original but always derivative. Because it begins in a liquid state, it requires an existing form to take shape. What remains in the plaster object is often little more than contour – stripped of weight, gloss, or material value.
Mathijsen’s work therefore raises fundamental questions: where does an image or object begin? Where does it end? What is the status of a print, a copy, or an echo of something that may or may not exist elsewhere? This tension between origin and endpoint lies at the heart of his sculptural practice. By reissuing fragments of existing architecture or interior design and placing them within another context, Mathijsen allows them to acquire new lives and meanings. The act of copying, or shifting context, is never entirely innocent: it erases an original function in order to make space for another.
For this exhibition, Mathijsen presents combinations of glass plates embedded with CMYK printing layers. These color separations point directly to the world of reproduction processes, in which images are built up through successive stages. Like plaster, the printed layers represent a state of transition – not the final product, but the host that makes something else possible. At the same time, they resist complete control. During the firing process, pigments can shift unpredictably: turning sepia or flaring up in unexpectedly vivid tones. In this way, the works demand an autonomous existence – not merely as intermediaries, but as images in their own right.
The works also exhibit a perverse clarity: traces of style, hints of a period, the hand of a maker that once drew these images on paper. By isolating and repositioning them, Mathijsen suggests an origin that may not, in fact, exist. Here, his practice echoes Georges Bataille’s notion that meaning arises precisely where usefulness is suspended. By extracting an object or image from its original function and inserting it into another framework, its utility is erased, but a new, excessive, or even sacred significance emerges. Much like in the act of ritual sacrifice – where something valuable is withdrawn from daily use and entrusted to another order – Mathijsen interrupts the logic of functionality to open up the possibility of a freer kind of meaning.
Tim Mathijsen (1987, The Netherlands) lives and works in Amsterdam. He studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie and attended De Ateliers in 2015. In 2019 he was a resident at WIELS in Brussels, where he presented a solo exhibition in the Project Room in 2022. Mathijsen is cofounder of Marwan, an artist-run project space in Amsterdam, and teaches at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie.
