UPROOTED (duo show)

Galerie TZR presents

UPROOTED: a duo show with Jasper de Beijer and Thijs Zweers

You are invited for the opening at Friday the 24th of June, from 1800 hrs until 2100 hrs

As artists, both Jasper de Beijer and Thijs Zweers tend to venture into the unknown. Zweers roams through the virtual realm, ending up deeper and deeper in its vaults and recesses. De Beijer travels into the jungle – both figuratively and literally – in search of the traces of failed expeditions.

For centuries, the forest has been a major theme in the visual arts, representing artists’ exploration of the subconscious. Behind every tree, every bush unfurls a new horizon: a new landscape to explore. Standing in the forest, the artist tries to distinguish the structure that underlies his surroundings, to resolve its mystery. The artist’s relationship with the forest has a certain dualism. The moment he is able to fathom the mechanism behind its apparent chaos, the landscape loses its sense of mystery. It loses its sheen, and he is forced to wander deeper into the woods in search of the ‘mechanics behind the mechanics’. Man’s constant quest to gain and understand new experiences explains his frantic curiosity and constant dissatisfaction.
Thijs Zweers sees the digital realm as an autonomous structure that – like a jungle – continues to proliferate and feed on what has come before. Any structure that it once possessed has long since dwindled into a vast horizontal grid, in which everyone is free to cultivate whatever he wants. In this world, exposure is the equivalent of daylight in the forest: across the planet, data turn to face the lit screen. Zweers hews a path through the dense undergrowth, in search of the roots of this immense chaos. He seeks to tame the dynamism of this digital jungle, by capturing its burgeoning images in the tangible and timeless medium of compressed charcoal on paper.
From the very start of his career, Jasper de Beijer has shown a fascination with voyages of exploration. For his latest project, ‘The Brazilian Suitcase’, De Beijer decided to follow the well-trodden paths of dozens of explorers who have ventured into the jungle in search of lost civilisations. All they ended up finding were the traces of their predecessors. The European interlopers have left an indelible mark on the jungle and its inhabitants, whose world has been changed forever. De Beijer holds a mirror up to the explorer’s face – showing that ultimately, the adventurer always sets forth in search of himself.
‘The Brazilian Suitcase’ records three different periods in history. For the final part of this trilogy, De Beijer travelled to the Amazon rainforest himself.

25th of June – 13th of August 2016