“I grew up on an island with only three directions”

4 May - 26 May 2024

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Patricia Werneck Ribas

Baoyang Zhao

Catelijne Boele

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Josilda da Conceição is pleased to invite you to the opening of a group exhibition 'I grew up on an island with only three directions’, interviewing works of various medium by three Netherlands-based artists, Patricia Werneck Ribas, Baoyang Zhao, and Catelijne Boele. 

Three-dimensional pieces presented under serial titles, 'Footsteps along the riverbank' and 'I walked 3 miles for a hug', bring a poetic sensibility to the exhibition space. These three miles are as much physical distance as mental distance for Baoyang Zhao within the experience of a touch. The expressions of the series are both personal and sculptural. In the sculptural aspects, the interplay between forms is the focus. How the shapes and forms function as the subject navigating the story and how the sculpture becomes an independent entity leads to the personal aspects of the series. Longing and reaching is a constant motion the artist tries to capture in their work. The gap between the touch is stretched by the stillness of the sculpture into perpetual possibilities. Hence the hug stops at the moment before the touch at the same moment, the sculptures begin to share their stories.

Catelijne Boele is guided on an intuitive level by a sensibility that searches for a material translation of the untranslatable; dreams, memories and imagination flow throughout her artistry. Through the act of painting she navigates feelings such as nostalgia and melancholia and allows these to take an alternative, visible form. The inspiration of her work usually derives from personal and sensory experiences, but is interwoven with imaginative narratives which develop in their own, dreamlike landscapes. These are partly inspired by natural environments from her memories, but transformed and developed through mystical storylines. The atmospheric places Boele paints function therefore as metaphorical containers, keeping underlying symbolism, memories and stories safe. They allow the figures within the paintings to roam freely through the monotone colour schemes, floating through space and speaking through their shapes and contrasts.

Taking as a starting point the Dutch colonisation of the Brazilian Northeast in the seventeenth century and the first depictions of Brazil's landscape, flora and fauna, Patricia Werneck Ribas presents a series of sculptural collages, based on research, that was made possible through the generous support of the Mondriaan Fonds.