XXXL PAINTING

This summer Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen and Port of Rotterdam are organising an exhibition of work by three contemporary painters in the Submarine Wharf entitled XXXL Painting. Concurrently two contemporary art exhibitions will open in the museum itself: 25 Years Rotterdam City Collection and Sensory Spaces 1 - Oscar Tuazon. Contemporary art takes centre stage for the whole summer in Rotterdam. 

The 5000m2 Submarine Wharf is located in Rotterdam’s docklands. This summer the building is being transformed into a gigantic painter’s studio with work by three internationally renowned painters: Chris Martin, Jim Shaw and Klaas Kloosterboer. The museum’s largest galleries play host to a selection from the Rotterdam City Collection: works in diverse media by internationally renowned artists and designers from Rotterdam such as Atelier Van Lieshout, Daan van Golden and Erik van Lieshout. Sensory Spaces is the title of a new series of solo exhibitions by young artists in the Willem van der Vorm Gallery made possible by AMMODO. The series begins with an installation by Oscar Tuazon.

You are cordially invited to the official opening of the exhibition XXXL Painting on Saturday, 8 June in the Submarine Wharf (the Netherlands).

Submarine Wharf The exhibition in the Submarine Wharf is a result of a partnership between the Port of Rotterdam and Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen. The Submarine Wharf from 1937 is of comparable size to the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern in London. It is one of the Port of Rotterdam’s initiatives to bring a broader public into contact with the harbour and to enhance the quality of people’s experience of the harbour area. The Submarine Wharf is part of the former RDM Campus. This piece of early twentieth-century industrial heritage is currently being redeveloped with a focus on education, innovative industries and culture. Every summer for five years, the vast building hosts a specially made installation by a leading contemporary artist. XXXL Painting is the fourth edition, following projects by Joep van Lieshout (2010), Elmgreen & Dragset (2011) and Sarkis (2012).

Curatorial Statement: Perspective on XXXL Painting by Els Hoek, guest curator.

Painting See ‘Painting’ as a mythical figure, an awesome giant with changing facial expressions, sometimes clothed in refined and costly garb, sometimes dressed in rags. And indeed occasionally stark naked! There are those who see a steady evolution since his emergence from the caves thousands of years ago: bigger, thicker, stronger. Others believe in a cosmic birth around 1425 when painting landed fully formed on earth; since then its image has been determined by the work of Jan van Eyck.

Value Once a giant has become a giant, it is difficult for mere mortals to detect whether he has truly grown by a few centimetres. And after so many changes in form and variations on great themes, the logical conclusion would seem to be that painting is now dormant or perhaps even dead. Nonsense, of course: mythical figures are immortal and furthermore the value of painting resides not in growth and change but simply in its being. Existence. So that we may project upon it our dreams and desires and thus may ward off our fears. A little like in the distant past, in the cave.

Painters Three men at the height of their careers, trained between 1975 and 1990, who have developed from promising and up-and-coming to astonishing and surprising. Never arrived. All three are accustomed to extending the boundaries of the canvas and to including the world beyond art in their work, to allow, as it were, the outside world to paint with them. And so none of them is afraid to think or work on a scale that transcends the human. Martin, Shaw and Kloosterboer stand on the shoulders of the giant called ‘Painting’ and certainly do not need his afternoon naps. They keep him moving and make grateful use of constantly changing vistas and perspectives.

Summer 2013 exhibition programme: Submarine Wharf – XXXL Painting Chris Martin, Jim Shaw and Klaas Kloosterboer — until 29 September. 25 Years Rotterdam City Collection — until 1 September. Sensory Spaces 1 - Oscar Tuazon — until 29 September.

The exhibition in the Submarine Wharf is a partnership between the Port of Rotterdam and Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen. Every summer for five years the vast building hosts a specially made installation by a leading contemporary artist. The three earlier exhibitions were devoted to Atelier Van Lieshout in 2010, the art duo Elmgreen & Dragset in 2011, and Sarkis in 2012.