Marten Hendriks – Time Slip

13 October 2018 – 13 January 2019

Media kit

Fifty-five years of work from the life of Marten Hendriks. Starting this Saturday, his wonderful selection of art will be on show for four months.

From 13 October, the multifaceted ‘Time Slip’ exhibition by Marten Hendriks (b. Doetinchem, 1941) will be on display at Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam. ‘Time Slip’ coincides with the publication of the monograph by Alex de Vries, which also showcases the artist’s life and work. The Hendriks exhibition has been compiled from a varied combination of paintings, drawings, photography and scale models.

Over the first decade of his artistic career, Marten Hendriks was chiefly concerned with painting and drawing. He exhibited in the Netherlands and abroad, and his first retrospective was staged at Museum Arnhem in 1972. On seeing that overview he felt that he was experiencing a retrospective of a deceased artist and stopped painting. He started to work with sound, photography and film, and created installations and performances. His interest in graphics led to 16mm films and performative actions. The artist developed video art, sound art, mail art and all kinds of other applications for his expressive ideas. In the 1970s Hendriks investigated the space that the body occupies. He produced a soundtrack of his body by punching its contour into a piano roll, resulting in a melody line in 3/4 time.

In the 1980s, when Hendriks started to paint again, he produced about 20 paintings over a decade. He also worked on a great quantity of drawings every day, and by looking at these selectively these fed into his painting. Over the last two decades Hendriks has above all evolved into an artist who works with the latest digital media as a contemporary continuation of the graphic visual idiom. The influence of Marten Hendriks on several generations of artists who trained in Arnhem is recognized by many of his former students.

Marten Hendriks, 'Onvoltooide Beeldindex', 2013-present.

The exhibition has been compiled with help of guestcurator Alex de Vries, who has also written a monograph about the artist: ‘Marten Hendriks – Leven en werk’ (Marten Hendriks – Life and Work). The impressive cohesion of the selection of the artist’s diversity of work makes the exhibition exceptional. The presentation includes Hendriks’ ‘unseen’ works: ‘Grote rode verkleuring’ (‘Red Discolouration on Canvas’) and ‘Grote donkere verkleuring’ (‘Large Red Discolouration’) from Collectie De Groen in Arnhem. Components of Hendriks’ hotly discussed ‘Onvoltooide beeldindex’ (‘Incomplete Visual Index’) are also being shown. The selection for ‘Time Slip’ has been compiled from the collections of Museum Het Valkhof, the CODA Museum in Apeldoorn, Museum Arnhem and Museum Jan Cunen.

‘Time Slip’ can be visited at Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen through to 13 January, coinciding with the exhibitions ‘Pure Rubens’, ‘Boijmans in the War’, and ‘Sensory Spaces 15’ by Sol Calero.

·         Monograph: ‘Marten Hendriks – Leven en Werk’ by Alex de Vries, with the support of the Mondriaan Fund, the Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds and the Jaap Harten Fonds. Published by Uitgeverij De Zwaluw.

·         On the day of the opening – Saturday, 13 October, at 2 PM – there is a presentation at Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen about the monograph ‘Marten Hendriks – Leven en werk’ in the form of a conversation between author Alex de Vries and Marten Hendriks.