Exhibitions NOW

Contemporary Art Listings The Hague

Tag: Beelden aan Zee

  • Khaled Dawwa: Voici mon coeur! at Museum Beelden aan Zee

    Khaled Dawwa: Voici mon coeur! at Museum Beelden aan Zee

    In 2025, in the context of Eighty Years of Freedom, Museum Beelden aan Zee will be presenting the installation Voici mon cœur ! (Here is my Heart), 2018-22 by the exiled Syrian artist Khaled Dawwa (1985). This six-meter long, contemporary war memorial from the Mucem’s collection has the form of a ruined exterior wall in a war-torn Damascus. Khaled Dawwa made the work from unfired clay, which gives it a more fragile appearance.

    The presentation of Voici mon cœur ! echoes the broader theme of the year of remembrance, in which local stories and various perspectives play a central role. Like traditional war memorials, Voici mon cœur also fulfils an educational function, serving as a means to create awareness and to stimulate dialogue about the impact of war and the importance of freedom. In this context Dawwa’s monument builds a bridge between past and present. While we reflect on the liberation of the Netherlands eighty years ago, his work offers a contemporary perspective of freedom and the lack of it. It reminds us that the struggle for freedom and human dignity does not end on a historical date, but is an ongoing process. The exhibition will be accompanied by a documentary about the artist.

    Curator: Dick van Broekhuizen.

  • Arno Hammacher: The Hammacher Archive at Museum Beelden aan Zee

    Arno Hammacher: The Hammacher Archive at Museum Beelden aan Zee

    Photographer and graphic designer Arno Hammacher (1927–2017) was the son of art historian Abraham Hammacher (1897–2002), director of the Kröller-Müller Museum from 1947 to 1963. Arno left his entire estate to Museum Beelden aan Zee. In 2017, the museum received various works of art, the archive, and the contents of his estate.

    Arno Hammacher worked and lived in Italy for a long time, moving to Milan in 1957. He trained at the predecessor of the Rietveld Academy, the Institute for Applied Arts Education in Amsterdam and the Royal Academy in The Hague, where he graduated in photography and graphic design in 1952. In the mid-fifties, he undertook study trips to Sicily, Calabria, and Sardinia. Before leaving for Milan, Hammacher worked at the Lettergieterij Amsterdam and studied for several years in London, where he became friends with the sculptor Barbara Hepworth. He introduced Hepworth to his father. In 1962, Arno Hammacher traveled around the United States. In the late 1970s, he was a guest lecturer at his own Rietveld.

    Arno Hammacher has organized dozens of exhibitions in Italy. He also created photo reports for magazines, books, and catalogs and was responsible for their design. He exhibited his photographic work in galleries and museums. Recurring themes in his work are architecture, sculpture, and nature. In 2008, the Museo della Scienza e della Tecnologia “Leonardo da Vinci,” in collaboration with the Archivio di Stato di Milano, organized the successful retrospective exhibition Il punto di vista di Arno.

    The archive contains various materials: personal documents, photographic material, documentation of Arno Hammacher’s work, and artworks made by him. The archive is of general art-historical importance. The emphasis is on the Italian art world of the 1970s and 1980s, but material from the artist’s entire working life is present. His political left-wing signature is striking. He filmed and photographed during the Carnation Revolution in Portugal and worked in Cuba. As an artist, he was not only politically engaged but also fascinated by details in nature.

    This intimate exhibition has been organized to do justice to his legacy and to keep his name alive as an artist. Sketches, finished works, and works by other artists are displayed together, revealing Arno Hammacher’s broad and cultivated taste. In his photographic work, he was fascinated by the abstraction of enlarged details, a way of conveying his broad cultural and artistic vision to the viewer.

  • Ryan Gander: X Edgar Degas – Pas de Deux at Museum Beelden aan Zee

    Ryan Gander: X Edgar Degas – Pas de Deux at Museum Beelden aan Zee

    In June, Museum Beelden aan Zee will be staging an exhibition which creates a dialogue between the work of the British visual artist Ryan Gander (1976) and that of the French painter and sculptor Edgar Degas (1834 – 1917). Since 2008, Gander has been working on a conceptual series in which he reinterprets Degas’ world-famous sculpture Petite Danseuse de Quatorze Ans (1881) and places her in a contemporary context. Gander’s sculptures liberate Degas’ fourteen year-old dancer from her pedestal and places her in various scenarios. The exhibition in Museum Beelden aan Zee will show Gander’s series of twenty-one ballerinas for the first time, and also in direct connection with Degas’ famous sculpture.

    Transition
    Petite Danseuse de Quatorze Ans marks the transition from classical to modern sculpture. The French artist not only captured the beauty of ballet life but also the tension between the discipline of dance and the vulnerability of youth with this sculpture of the young ballerina in a restrained and realistic pose. More than a century later, Ryan Gander reflects upon Degas’ work through a series of ballerina sculptures with poetic titles in unexpected or everyday situations. His reinterpretations raise questions about the idealization of the ballerina and the role of art in presenting reality versus fiction.

    Brigitte Bloksma, director of Museum Beelden aan Zee and curator of the exhibition: “The relationship between Degas’ original work and Gander’s approach offers a fascinating reflection on the perception of the ballerina and the subtle boundaries between art and everyday life. It shows how artists across time address themes such as movement, youth, and vulnerability.”

    New work
    Ryan Gander X Edgar Degas – Pas de Deux will be Ryan Gander’s first solo exhibition in the Netherlands. The exhibition is being made possible thanks to a collaboration with public and private collections worldwide which have lent their sculptures, as well as Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, which has kindly lent us Degas’ Petite Danseuse de Quatorze Ans (1880 – 1881/1922). Museum Beelden aan Zee has commissioned Ryan Gander to make a new ballerina, Waiting for timefall, or Living in a time where everything is possible, but nothing can happen, the last work in his series.

    A publication with a contribution by the artist is being published to coincide with the exhibition.

    Book your tickets at https://www.beeldenaanzee.nl/en/visit/buy-tickets

    Curator: Brigitte Bloksma

  • Tania Kovats: Oceanic at Museum Beelden aan Zee

    Tania Kovats: Oceanic at Museum Beelden aan Zee

    Tania Kovats (b. 1966, UK) creates sculptures and drawings that explore our relationship with the natural world. Her work is characterised by a deep fascination with the elements, the universe, and ’mankind’s place within it. In Oceanic, Kovats focuses on the sea and water.

    At the heart of this presentation is the monumental series The Divers (2018). These figurative sculptures, cast in concrete using wetsuits as moulds, appear to dive into the museum floor. They reflect our fluid nature and raise questions about the limits of the body, the power of water, and our physical surrender to it. At the same time, the titles of the sculptures refer to iconic dancers from modern (sculptural) art, such as Isadora Duncan, Salome, and the ballerinas of Edgar Degas and Giacomo Manzù.

    Kovats’ latest works from the series Sea Marks are being shown alongside the sculptures. Using simple, repeated brushstrokes, she traces the horizon—the most meaningful line in the landscape for her—where sea and sky meet.

    Kovats’ work evokes a profound sense of connection with nature. It invites reflection, wonder, and renewed awareness of the rhythm of water—the element that carries, connects, and continually reshapes us.

    Curator: Brigitte Bloksma.