Photo London 2018 | Thomas Kuijpers, Lana Mesić en Sjoerd Knibbeler

Sjoerd Knibbeler | Exploded views, installation shot from the exhibition Within Reach at Collectie De.Groen in Arnhem (2018)

Photo London
16 mei – 20 mei 2018
Somerset House | Londen | Verenigd Koninkrijk
Met veel trots reist het team van LhGWR naar Londen om – na bijna tien jaar – voor het eerst deel te nemen aan een beurs in het buitenland. Photo London, dat plaats zal vinden van 16 tot met 20 mei, is een jonge beurs met veel ambitie en daar is het talent van Thomas Kuijpers, Lana Mesić en Sjoerd Knibbeler perfect op zijn plek.

In de Discovery Section die is gecureerd door Tristan Lund tonen jonge makers en/of jonge galeries nieuw werk. LhGWR koos voor het werk van; Thomas Kuijpers, die nieuwe werken uit zijn succesvolle serie Bad Trip zal presenteren, Lana Mesić die haar serie City Players (over het bankwezen in Londen) terug naar de oorsprong zal brengen, en Sjoerd Knibbeler’s nieuwe prachtige reeks Expoded views.

It is with great pride that the LhGWR team travels to London to participate, for the first time in almost a decade, in an art fair abroad. Photo London , which will take place from 16 to May 20 , is a new and upcoming fair with a lot of ambition. The talent of Thomas Kuijpers , Lana Mesic and Sjoerd Knibbeler fit perfectly in place.

Curated by Tristan Lund the Discovery Section will be the platform where you will find young artists and/or young galleries showing new works. LhGWR selected works by; Thomas Kuijpers, who will present new works from his successful series Bad Trip , Lana Mesić who will bring her series City Players back to its source, and Sjoerd Knibbeler who will show a new wonderful range of Expoded views.

Thomas Kuijpers
Kuijpers amassed an archive of front pages, sensationalist headlines, and popular images that kindle a collective fear of terrorism. He encroached into the fringes of the web, tracking the posts of a number of right-wing/anti-Islamic communities to study the kind of information their members consume. In an attempt to retrace what exactly inspires his own angst, he filmed and photographed situations in his daily life that triggered associations with terrorism. A truck loaded with gas tanks: surely the perfect weapon to drive into a crowd? A blurry positive of an ambulance passing at speed: a car bomb explosion. We see a woman participating in an online forum, and a veiled woman on a bus watching what seems to be an online sermon. Both inhabit virtual realities that unconsciously and involuntarily inspired suspicion with the artist. With his therapeutic practice of collecting and deconstructing the visual make-up of a shared paranoia, Kuijpers questions how our perception of reality is led largely by sensationalism, fake news and irrational fears.

Thomas Kuijpers fell into a dark hole after Trump got elected. Where his practice before was always about understanding the structures behind the image, opening up these structures to the public, Trump destroyed these structures overnight by introducing the term ‘fake-news’- instantly making everyone a media-skeptic.

Confused about his role as an artist, and willing to understand why people would give their vote to someone like Trump (or his Dutch equivalent), he encroached into the fringes of the web, tracking the posts of a number of populist communities to study the kind of information their members consume. No work was made in 4 months, and while Kuijpers only consumed this information, something weird started to happen to his daily reality. When being at a crowded party, for instance, these bataclan-flashbacks started to appear, leaving Kuijpers wondering where to run when someone with bad intentions would come in. These triggering moments, to Kuijpers clearly influenced by the amount of information he consumed, became increasingly more present in his daily life. In an attempt to retrace what exactly inspires his own angst, he filmed and photographed situations in his daily life that triggered associations with terrorism. The photographs of these situations where taken back to the studio, where he used his archive of front pages, sensationalist headlines, and popular images to retrace the cause of the paranoia at that moment. With his therapeutic practice of collecting and deconstructing the visual make-up of a shared paranoia, Kuijpers questions how our perception of reality is led largely by sensationalism, fake news and irrational fears.
Booklaunch Gesture by Thomas Kuijpers (published by Metronom Books)

First glance at Gesture by Thomas Kuijpers (published by Metronom)

For all autograph hunting book collectors: On Friday 18th of May around 16:00 hrs. Thomas will be present at the booth of LhGWR to sign his newest publication.


Blocks (indicating targets), Hahnemuhle print + archival collage, 61 x 50 cm, 2018


Radical verse (I suppose), Hahnemuhle print + archival collage, 44 x 37 cm, 2018


Suitcase (In abandoned car, beneath shopping centre), Hahnemuhle print + archival collage, 52 x 45 cm, 2018


Trump just made my favourite restaurant a target (or isn’t hummus Jewish?), Hahnemuhle print + archival collage, 58,5 x 49 cm, 2018


In 2016 I read they will use drones to harm us at some point (can still happen any moment), Hahnemuhle print + archival collage, 44,5 x 53,5 cm, 2018


Praying in public out loud (Bluetooth phone call), Hahnemuhle print + archival collage, 45 x 52 cm, 2018


Live (Celebration), Hahnemuhle print + archival collage, 44 x 35,5 cm, 2018


I’m at Zaventem (again), Hahnemuhle print + archival collage, 61 x 50 cm, 2018


13 sim cards (conspiring), Hahnemuhle print + archival collage, 80 x 50 cm, 2018


Loud bang on the street (Big Bags), Hahnemuhle print + archival collage, 65 x 48 cm, 2018


Full Street (Stay on the side), Hahnemuhle print + archival collage, 43,5 x 37 cm, 2018

Lana Mesić
LhGWR will presents Lana Mesić’ projects Souls, Ties and a Pile of Carrots and a part of Towers. Souls, Ties and a Pile of Carrots has been realized whilst doing a residency in London as the winner of the Grolsch Unseen Residency 2016. In line with her research on the financial district in London (focussing on time passing money stackers), Mesić interviewed and portraid bankers in order to get a grip on this invisible and abstract world they life in. After a year the project will travel back to it’s origin, searching for dialogue.

“One of the largest global failures in the recent years was the 2008 economic crash. This event was so devastating that the ripples of doubt in regards to the financial industry are still felt today and has changed the face of banking forever.
I was curious to find out more about these Wizards of Oz. I wanted to know more about them, how they work, what they feel and how they think about theri enviroment. What ensued was a series of interviews in which I asked small and big questions.

However photography as such has fallen short and to portray the purely photographically wouldn’t give justice to the subject. Cross-stich technique was used instead. In this form of embroidery x-shaped stitches are used in a raster like pattern in order to form a picture. The relation of time vs value being clearly demonstrated, as the more time the practitioner puts into the work the clearer it becomes. In the case of “Souls, Ties and a Piles of Carrots”, the time given by each individual is transformed into the time I have put in the cross-stitch. Each pixel corresponds to one coloured stitch. The time that each individual “gave” during the interview was used as abase value which I then extrapolated to the timeI was allowed to work on their portrait. This resulted in 12 hand-made portraits of individuals that work in the Financial Industry of London and reflects ideas expressed during the time we have spent together.”

(Lana Mesić, 2018)


The City Player 01, Cotton thread on aida fabric, 35,5 x 27,5 cm, 2017


The City Player 02, Cotton thread on aida fabric, 29 x 23,5 cm, 2017


Tower IX, Ultrachrome print, 118 x 150 cm, 2016


The City Player 03, Cotton thread on aida fabric, 29 x 23,5 cm, 2017


The City Player 04, Cotton thread on aida fabric, 35,5 x 27,5 cm, 2017


Tower VIII, Ultrachrome print, 118 x 150 cm, 2016


The City Player 05, Cotton thread on aida fabric, 35,5 x 27,5 cm, 2017


The City Player 06, Cotton thread on aida fabric, 42 x 32 cm, 2017


The City Player 7, Cotton thread on aida fabric, 42 x 32 cm, 2017


The City Player 08, Cotton thread on aida fabric, 35,5 x 27,5 cm, 2017


The City Player 9, Cotton thread on aida fabric, 35,5 x 27,5 cm, 2017


Tower VII, Ultrachrome print, 118 x 150 cm, 2016


The City Player 10, Cotton thread on aida fabric, 35,5 x 27,5 cm, 2017


The City Player 11, Cotton thread on aida fabric, 35,5 x 27,5 cm, 2017


The City Player 12, Cotton thread on aida fabric, 35,5 x 27,5 cm, 2017


Tower, HD video, loop (duration 1.10 min), 2016


Tower I, Ultrachrome print, 118 x 150 cm, 2016


Tower II, Ultrachrome print, 118 x 150 cm, 2016


Tower III, Ultrachrome print, 118 x 150 cm, 2016

Sjoerd Knibbeler
In his work and practice Sjoerd Knibbeler often takes a rudimentary approach to characterize and question the complex. Rather than simplifying, it allows him to outline the innately human qualities that lie at the core of technology: curiosity and inventivity. Recently he has started exploring the concept of the Camera Obscura, inspired by Isaac Newton’s first experiments on the nature of light. He has built his own version of this device in an attempt to de-familiarize himself with photography and consciously begin again.
A beam of sunlight is reflected into the camera obscura and passes through a constellation of prisms to produce colour and contrast. The shape and position of these handmade prisms determines the way white light is dispersed into spectral colours. By altering the position of the prisms he is able to create different compositions that are recorded as photograms. Once recorded, the photogram is solidified within a three-dimensional transparent block: a prism encompassing a physically rendered analogue colour space.


Exploded views (installation view at Collectie De.Groen in Arnhem), print in perspex block, 2018


Camera obscura, self build camera for the Exploded views - photograms of prisms


Exploded view #7, Photogram in perspex block 16 x 20 x 4 cm, 2017


Exploded view #12, Photogram in perspex block 16 x 20 x 4 cm, 2017


Exploded view #18, Photogram in perspex block 16 x 20 x 4 cm, 2017


Exploded view #40, UltraChrome print op rag paper, 28 x 35 cm (paper size 30 x 42 cm), 2017


Exploded view #93, Photogram in perspex block 16 x 20 x 4 cm, 2017


Exploded view #76, UltraChrome print op rag paper, 28 x 35 cm (paper size 30 x 42 cm), 2017


Exploded view #107, UltraChrome print op rag paper, 28 x 35 cm (paper size 30 x 42 cm), 2017


Exploded view #102, Photogram in perspex block 16 x 20 x 4 cm, 2017

Also available at Photo London: Sjoerd Knibbeler’s Exploded View BoX