TORCH is happy to present simultaneous exhibitions by two talented young artists: Krijn Kroes and Mees van Rijckevorsel. This is the gallery's first collaboration with both. Despite working with different materials and different intentions, the artists share surprising pictorial similarities: both Mees and Krijn are concerned with patterns and abstractions of well-known themes.
Mees van Rijckevorsel (1990, NL) is a devoted skater and admirer of the messiest corners of Amsterdam. His artworks play with the wry contrast between plans and reality. People will make a place their own no matter the architect's idealist intentions. Mees captures often overlooked examples of small-scale civil disobedience or simple neglect that show that Utopia can't be forced on an unruly society.
By removing the subjects' surroundings and abstracting their scale and perspective, Mees emphasises the absurdity of these human interventions. These oil pastel drawings on paper can be seen as a silent protest against Amsterdam becoming an over-regulated and over-designed city.
Mees van Rijckevorsel graduated from the architecture department of the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam in 2015 and followed it up with a post-doc at Academie van Bouwkunsten, before deciding to visualise his knowledge and experiences in art instead.
This exhibition was created in collaboration with Singular-Art, Nijmegen (NL).
