A la c’Arte
The art of food – Food in art

 
18 September 2010 to 2 January 2011
 
A steaming dish of venison, roasted hare and dove.  Further along, turnips, shining rolmops and juicy cherries. Well dressed persons gather around a table, knowing that at any moment they may begin.  Images from a cooking programme? No, an impression of the art in the new exhibition at the Noordbrabants Museum.  From September until January it’s all about food. It’s enough to make your mouth water!

 

Warning: a visit to A la c’Arte can lead to uncontrollable appetite and exciting experiments in the kitchen!
 

Food in art

The exhibition A la c’Arte serves a tasty mixture of food in art.  With bacchanalias, game pieces, still lifes, Biblical meals, and family portraits – from artists such as Frans Francken, Frans Snijders and David Teniers, Henk Helmantel and  Margriet Smulders. A presentation of old and modern art, mixed together and accentuated with artist-decorated crockery.  At other locations in the museum the visitor will also find presentations of historic glass and china.
 
The art of food

A la c’Arte is a culinary exploration for all.  Contemporary and playful and divided into three themes. The theme ‘ingredients’ is enriched by four Michelin Star chefs from Brabant; Cas Spijkers, Gerrit Greveling (Chalet Royal, ’s-Hertogenbosch), Joost Verhoeven (Cordial, Oss) and John Kocken (De Heer Kocken, Vught). In word and image they present how they have created, inspired by the works of art, a fabulous four course menu. The paintings in the theme ‘meals’ are reviewed by culinary critic Jeroen Thijssen and for ‘Symbolism’ the hidden meanings of food in art are revealed to the visitor by the art historians of the museum.
 
Activities

During the exhibition all sorts of special activities take place. For children from 4 to 12 years of age there are three taste routes in the exhibition: sweet, sour and salt. For more information on this and other activities see our website www.noordbrabantsmuseum.nl

Sonnet CIXX

What potions have I drunk of Siren tears,

"This summer the biggest room in the SM-s museum is transformed into a huge voluptuous world full of flowers, breasts, seeds, trees, glass, photo-works, wood and ink, friends and water. A total experience given to you by two artists Maria Roosen (Oisterwijk, 1957) and Margriet Smulders (Bussum, 1955) in which both oeuvres are confronted with each other in a dialogue. Maria using the floors and Margriet the walls.

With this exposition a deep wish of Margriet’s former gallerist Gerard Hendricks (who passed away the summer of 2007) in showing the two artists together is fulfilled.

Maria and Margriet are peers, good friends and they belong to the most successful artists in the Netherlands. Both oeuvres are inspired and motivated from their own worlds within, and their way of living.

Maria Roosen will show some new installations specially made for the SM-s reacting on the room itself. She will also show some video works. The separate works of both artists will be formulated as one big installation. The show will be organized in a rather free and associative way, not chronological or thematic. Margriet Smulders shows many new photographs and a giant mural which dialogues with her photo-works. She will also present for the first time, some video’s in which she shows her fascinations and inspirations."
     -The SM-'s museum

Last year I made some very heavy and “bloody” works. They were inspired by my heart infection (2004) and my open heart operation (2005) which left me emotional and gave me new inspiration in my photography. The sonnets written by Shakespeare very much reflect my thoughts and moods during that time.

Sonnet CXIX

What potions have I drunk of Siren tears,
Distilled from limbecks foul as hell within,
Applying fears to hopes, and hopes to fears,
Still losing when I saw myself to win!
What wretched errors hath my heart committed,
Whilst it hath thought itself so blessed never!
How have mine eyes out of their spheres been fitted,
In the distraction of this madding fever!
O benefit of ill! now I find true
That better is by evil still made better;
And ruined love, when it is built anew,
Grows fairer than at first, more strong, far greater.
So I return rebuked to my content,
And gain by ill thrice more than I have spent.

Sonnet CXX

That you were once unkind befriends me now,
And for that sorrow, which I then did feel,
Needs must I under my transgression bow,
Unless my nerves were brass or hammered steel.
For if you were by my unkindness shaken,
As I by yours, you've passed a hell of time;
And I, a tyrant, have no leisure taken
To weigh how once I suffered in your crime.
O! that our night of woe might have remembered
My deepest sense, how hard true sorrow hits,
And soon to you, as you to me, then tendered
The humble salve, which wounded bosoms fits!
But that your trespass now becomes a fee;
Mine ransoms yours, and yours must ransom me.    

I am very pleased to show my works with those of Maria Roosen: I have always admired her work, especially her voluptuous sensual milk cans and the humorous way of looking at the world around her. Her works intrigue me and they trigger my senses and sensual feelings. Somehow her works seduce me making mine more soft and comfortable. That’s why the new soft rosa cloudy mural of 24 meters long will be covered with sensual milky works in which I hope I can float and get away from it all.
     
Margriet Smulders, June 2008



Een duotentoonstelling van Maria Roosen en Margriet Smulders

Deze zomer is de grote zaal van het SM’s getransformeerd tot een weelderige wereld van bloemen, borsten, zaden, bomen, glas en foto’s, mdf en inkt, vrienden en water. Een totaalervaring wordt aangeboden door de kunstenaars Maria Roosen (Oisterwijk 1957) en Margriet Smulders (Bussum 1955) waarbij beide oeuvres een spannende dialoog met elkaar aangaan zonder elkaar in de weg te zitten. Maria heeft de vloer tot haar beschikking, Margriet de muren. Met deze tentoonstelling wordt tevens gehoor gegeven aan een diep gekoesterde wens van de vorig jaar overleden Bossche galeriehouder en kunstenaar Gerard Hendriks om beide kunstenaars samen te tonen.

Maria en Margriet zijn generatiegenoten van elkaar, goed bevriend en behoren tot de meest succesvolle kunstenaars van Nederland. Beide oeuvres zijn gemotiveerd vanuit de eigen wereld en eigen levensloop.

Maria Roosen zal een aantal nieuwe installaties tonen die speciaal voor het SM’s zijn gemaakt en die reageren op de ruimte zelf. Ook zal zij videowerk tonen. Met de losse werken van beide kunstenaars als bouwstenen wordt één grote installatie gebouwd waarbij de losse elementen geschakeerd in elkaar grijpen. De ontwikkeling die getoond wordt is eerder vrij en associatief dan chronologisch of thematisch. Margriet Smulders laat vele nieuwe foto’s zien en een gigantische wandtekening die in dialoog treedt met de foto’s. Daarnaast zal zij voor het eerst video’s laten zien waar ze op een ongedwongen wijze haar fascinaties en inspiraties inzichtelijk maakt.
 

Niets over hippie’s in deze expositie maar des te meer over bloemen. Er hangt werk van ruim twintig kunstenaars met bloemen in de hoofdrol. Opzet van deze tentoonstelling is het presenteren van een bloementuin aan kunst. Vol als in de klassieke Parijse Salons, maar dan met een concept. Hier een border met geel, daar een perk met roze. Hier de exorbitanten, de kleurige schreeuwerds, daar de ingetogen kelkjes. In die bloemenzee van verbeelding kan de hedendaagse kunstbotanicus op zoek gaan naar bijzondere exemplaren, naar achterliggende betekenissen, speciale vormen. Of zich simpleweg laten bedwelmen door sfeer, kleur en schoonheid.

Emon Gallery Margriet Smulders - Takeshi Kainuma


Emon Gallery Margriet Smulders


Emon Gallery Margriet Smulders


Emon Gallery Takeshi Kainuma


"Aqualand"

Two Dutch and Japanese photographers who draw in on the depth of color in depicting water and flowers through photography. The worlds of Margriet Smulders and Takeshi Kainuma.

The fact that 2008 is the 150th anniversary of the establishment of bilateral diplomatic relations between Japan and the Netherlands and next year is the 400th anniversary of commercial relations between these two countries calls for commemoration. In the end of the 18th century, when Europe was embroiled in the Napoleonic wars, the only place in the world where the Dutch flag was being flown was on the island of Dejima, in Japan. For Japan, this symbolized a “window to the West”, and ever since these two countries have worked tirelessly to foster these relationships, even creating a friendship in the process.
Over the next two years, we will be holding “Nederland in Japan2008-2009”. Amid the growing recognition of a need to bring our long-standing mutual tradition into the future, the Emon Photo Gallery has elected to answer this need for deeper understanding of arts and culture by hosting a photography joint exhibition by artists from Japan and the Netherlands.
Margriet Smulders was born in 1955 in Bussum, the Netherlands. She held a special interest in flowers from the time she was very young. After graduating from the Academy of Visual Arts, Arnhem, from the 80s she specialized in portraits with arranged flowers in the background, and in the 90s she began creating experimental photography with a floral motif. In her more recent works tulips are the most prevalent of the cut flowers she uses, along with mirrors and water. As is evident in the title of a series she completed last year, “GET DRANK”, her works are surging with a flood of vibrant colors that seems overwhelm and “drink in” the viewer. Her picked flowers drift in water. They have the exquisite luster of flowers rotting at the brink. With the frame as their stage, the flowers take on the character of sensuality, and perform it elegantly. These works have a message overflowing with feminine sensibilities that give them a fierce individuality that makes them stand out. In this exhibition, eight pieces from this series, including 2 pieces over 2 meters in size, will be exhibited for the first time in Japan.
Takeshi Kainuma is a photographer who photographs from within nature. Born in 1962 in Tokyo, in 1996 he went to the United States and spent 9 years there creating series focusing on nature. In this exhibition, his colorful “Kobotokegawa” series that surpasses even his monochromatic “BUSH” series and 8 works hand selected from his “Family Ground” series will be featured. “Kobotokegawa” layers rich colors several times over into a vibrant three dimensional world, and “Family Ground” focuses its lens on various organisms trapped sleeping within ice. These works bring out the rich nature that spreads beneath our feet and shows a depiction of a world that resembles the cosmos, filled with order and harmony.
The motif of plants and water is one of the characteristics that these two artists share, and though their style and sensibilities are completely opposite, when you view their works together in the same space, the shared idea behind them seems to be “works that draw in on the depth of color, and depict through photography”.
The water and flowers of these two artists sway lambently like works of the Impressionists and have an expressive painted quality. Here at our gallery you can see the contrast in senses between the West and the East.
March 2008. Emon Photo Gallery Director, Seiji Komatsu