Amsterdam is gearing up for the most significant museum exhibition of Dutch photography duo Scheltens & Abbenes to date, set to open at Foam on 15 March. Their preparation for the show echoes the fastidious still lifes they are renowned for: a sharp attention to detail fused with an ability to abstract and elevate the ordinary into the wondrous.
Spanning their 18 years of collaboration, the exhibition guides viewers through new contextualisations of magazine pages, blown up into large prints and diptychs. ‘If the object has the ability to be something abstract besides its figuration and function, there is a good chance we go for it,’ explain Maurice Scheltens and Liesbeth Abbenes. ‘All objects can become worth looking [at]. It’s a matter of observing, turning and investigating closely together with light and shadow, which becomes also part of the object and composition.’
The exhibition’s title, too, is key to understanding the duo’s practice. ‘ZEEN’ – a synonym for the Dutch word for ‘tendon’ in anatomy – sees the artists’ sensitivity to micro elements lay the cornerstones for whole visual structures. It is the pair’s intention that the viewer is immersed in a detailed perspective, sharing their fascination up close. ‘In our more abstract pictures we will always leave a little hint of how things are done or something to recognise,’ add the duo, ‘just enough to make to viewer part of the play and wonder about how familiar objects can also look.’
Their compositions are aesthetically rigorous yet deeply stirring. Concept is always first and foremost as the artists’ lively imaginations turn something as simple as an iron on a shirt into a graphic landscape, soap bars into seemingly infinite pill-like treasures, or tableware into a celestial skyscape.
A site-specific video installation created specially for Foam is inspired by an impulse about how a still life would look in motion, revealing Scheltens & Abbenes’ enthralment with form, pattern and line. This expansion of their practice is a collaboration between the still and the moving, the duo musing that ‘one cannot exist without the other.’ It is this inquisitiveness that is central to the artists’ practice: a limitless yen for experimentation has allowed them to build a genre-defying oeuvre.
Colour installation designed for the Art Institute of Chicago, 2014, in collaboration with Scholten & Baijings and Hay. © Scheltens & Abennes
Irony, 2012, for Fantastic Man. © Scheltens & Abennes
Doilies 1, 2018, for Pin-Up Magazine. © Scheltens & Abennes
INFORMATION
‘ZEEN’ is on view from 15 March – 5 June. For more information, visit the Foam website
ADDRESS
Foam
Keizersgracht 609
1017 DS Amsterdam
-
Nela is London's new stage for open-fire gastronomyA beloved Amsterdam import brings live-fire elegance to The Whiteley’s grand revival
-
How we host: with Our Place founder, Shiza ShahidWelcome, come on in, and take a seat at Wallpaper*s new series 'How we host' where we dissect the art of entertaining. Here, we speak to Our Place founder Shiza Shahid on what makes the perfect dinner party, from sourcing food in to perfecting the guest list, and yes, Michelle Obama is invited
-
Matteo Thun carves a masterful thermal retreat into the Canadian RockiesBasin Glacial Waters, a project two decades in the making, finally surfaces at Lake Louise, blurring the boundaries between architecture and terrain
-
Provocative and playful, Blommers & Schumm's images sit at the intersection of fine art and photographyDutch photography duo Blommers & Schumm present 25 years of work at Foam, Amsterdam
-
Tilda Swinton: 'If Derek Jarman were with us now, he'd be making films on an iPhone'Ahead of her Amsterdam exhibition, which spotlights eight new works with Jarman, Jarmusch and more, Swinton opens up about collaboration, creativity and why the process matters more than the product
-
‘As an artist, I’ve never felt more useful than now’: Steve McQueen on his monumental film screening in AmsterdamThe film director on why now felt like the right time to screen a previously unseen 34-hour version of his 2023 documentary ‘Occupied City’, on the façade of the Rijksmuseum
-
Out of office: what the Wallpaper* editors have been up to this weekThis week saw the Wallpaper* team jet-setting to Jordan and New York; those of us left in London had to make do with being transported via the power of music at rooftop bars, live sets and hologram performances
-
Meet the duo using hair and photography as a medium to consider Africa and the African diaspora‘Strands & Structures’ makes its European debut at the Open Space Contemporary Art Museum in Amsterdam, exploring social and environmental issues in Accra, Ghana
-
Miami’s new Museum of Sex is a beacon of open discourseThe Miami outpost of the cult New York destination opened last year, and continues its legacy of presenting and celebrating human sexuality
-
‘The danger of AI’, photography and the future at FoamNew project ‘Photography Through the Lens of AI’ asks the big questions at Foam, Amsterdam
-
Artist Peggy Kuiper’s impactful figurative works explore her memories and emotional landscape with striking visual intensityPeggy Kuiper presents ‘The Conversation That Never Took Place’ at Reflex in Amsterdam, featuring over 25 new works (until 13 July)
