Artbreak Gallery and Holland Tunnel Gallery present a tribute to the historical connection between New York (New Amsterdam) and the Netherlands

DUTCH DIRECTIONS
Contemporary arts from the Netherlands in the Dutch tradition and beyond

Marjolijn van den Assem, Hendrik Kerstens (Courtesy of Witzenhausen Gallery),
Paulien Lethen, Jan Mulder, Jos Looise, Jan van der Ploeg, Teun Voeten

November 6 to November 30, 2009 at Artbreak Gallery

FRIDAY NOVEMBER 13, 6 - 10 PM SPECIAL RECEPTION with live jazz by acclaimed Dutch jazz musicians Heleen Schuttevaêr (pianist/vocalist) and Tineke Postma (alto saxophone) with guitarist Ron Jackson from New York www.heleenschuttevaer.nl www.tinekepostma.com www.ronjacksonmusic.com

Dutch Directions is part of the cultural festivities that celebrate the Henry Hudson 400 Year and Five Dutch Days www.5dutchdaysnyc.org

Artbreak Gallery
195 Grand Street (between Bedford and Driggs)
Brooklyn, New York 11211

Gallery Hours: Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday from 1 -7 P. M.
and by appointment (718) 302- 1021 or (917) 690-9119
www.artbreakgallery.com
www.hollandtunnelgallery.com

THE EXHIBITION

“Dutch Directions” is co-curated by Dutchborn Paulien Lethen-Schuttevaêr, artist and director of Holland Tunnel Gallery in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. She lived in Greece and Japan before she moved to New York in 1982. In 1997 she founded the Holland Tunnel Gallery that gained worldwide recognition as a microcosm of local and international talent. In 2000 she opened a summer extension on Paros, Greece, featuring international artists. Holland Tunnel New York stopped its monthly exhibition schedule in 2007. Lethen now initiates, hosts and co-curates special projects in her gallery and in other art spaces. Her sister, Dutch jazz musician Heleen Schuttevaêr, often provides live jazz for Paulien Lethens cultural enterprises.

Holland Tunnel Gallery has invited the following 5 Dutch artists for the exhibition :

MARJOLIJN VAN DEN ASSEM (Rotterdam, The Netherlands, 1947)
Since 1979, Marjolijn van den Assem has been inspired by the work and life of Friedrich Nietzsche. She regularly visits and documents the places where Nietzsche stayed and studies publications written by, or about, Nietzsche. Van den Assem wrote about her work in the book "Seelenbriefe" (2007): ”I travel the world on paper and canvas. My experiences find repercussions in images. My hand follows my thinking seismographically." Her work (drawings, paintings, sculptures) is represented in 10 Dutch Museums of Modern Art
http://www.marjolijnvandenassem.nl

PAULIEN LETHEN (Utrecht, The Netherlands, 1942)
New York-based Dutch painter Paulien Lethen lived on the Greek island of Paros from the late ‘60’s till 1982. In that year she moved to NY but spends several months each year on Paros. She also has been living in Kyoto. Her paintings on paper, wood and metal are inspired by the different worlds of Paros, Japan and New York. Light, shadow and movement are returning elements in Lethen’s bold, strong and colorful compositions. In 1997 she founded the Holland Tunnel Gallery in Brooklyn NY that has gained worldwide recognition as a microcosm of local and international talent.

www.hollandtunnelgallery.com

JOS LOOISE (Hoek van Holland, The Netherlands, 1953)
Jos Looise is a versatile artist. Among his works are portraits, still lifes, model drawings and 17th century genre paintings. He had decorated a theatre hall and recently turned the windows of a monumental building in Schiedam into an art work with numerous portraits. He is an illustrator, and produces social reportages in oil. Looise masters many crafts which allow him to give free rein to his imagination with an energy that seems oblivious to whatever technical or practical problem he may come across.
www.joslooise.com

JAN MULDER (Almelo, The Netherlands, 1955)
Jan Mulder’s commitment to convey emotional and existential experiences through memorized or invented landscapes results in vivid abstract oil paintings. Abstract marks accumulate in balanced compositions that reflect changes of light and space and the passage of time. Dutch publicist H.J.A.Hofland wrote: “Mulder’s paintings (…) produce the sensation that comes with the discovery of things which were thought to be lost.” Poems of Rilke and Celan are a source of inspiration. Mulder spends part of the year on the Greek island of Paros and in New York.
www.janmulder.info

JAN VAN DER PLOEG (Amsterdam, The Netherlands,1959)
The work of Jan van der Ploeg has it roots in Piet Mondriaan’s Neo-Plasticism and De Stijl movement connected to Theo van Doesburg. The connection is intensified by his concentration on the act of painting, anachronistic and traditional in contemporary terminology. He has developed his own colour-vocabulary, existing of black, white and contrasting tones such as pink, purple and orange. Jan van der Ploeg’s wallpaintings and canvasses connect painting, sculpture, system and serial production. They function as signs and ornaments.

www.gerhardhofland.com

Artbreak Gallery has invited the following Dutch artists:

TEUN VOETEN

Teun Voeten studied Cultural Anthropology and Philosophy before he started to work as a photographer and journalist. Over the years, he covered the conflicts in Ex- Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Sudan, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan, Colombia, Gaza, Lebanon, Iraq, and DR Congo. His work has been published in Vanity Fair, Newsweek, The New Yorker, and National Geographic among others. Voeten is also a contributing photographer for the International Committee of the Red Cross, Doctors without Borders, Human Rights Watch and the United Nations. In 1996, Voeten published 'Tunnelmensen", a journalistic anthropological account of an underground homeless community in New York. It In 2000 he published "How de Body? Hope and Horror in Sierra Leone", a first hand account of this terrible war. Voeten won numerous awards for his work and is a sought after lecturer at universities and cultural institutions. He lives intermittently in New York and
Brussels. Currently, he is working on a book project documenting drug related violence in Mexico. His book on the New York Tunnel people will appear in English translation in the US early 2010.
www.teunvoeten.com

HENDRIK KERSTENS (The Hague, 1956)

(courtesy of Witzenhausen Gallery)

When Hendrik Kerstens decided to dedicate himself entirely to photography in 1995, he turned to a model very near at hand: his daughter Paula. Time and time again he uses his daughter as a model, immortalizing her, as if to stop time and oblivion. Not only does he picture her in relation to events in her own life, he also projects on her his fascination with the Dutch painters of the seventeenth century. A number of the portraits of Paula are very reminiscent of Johannes Vermeer. The austerity of the photograph, its clarity, the serene expression on the young girl’s face, and, not least, the characteristic ‘Dutch’ light, all combine to create this impression. Kerstens has photographed others beside his daughter. These ‘portraits’ and ‘tronies’ (the 17th century Dutch word for faces or heads) refer in their execution to both the Dutch masters and the portraits of the Italian Renaissance..

www.hendrikkerstens.com