Two Dutch artists, Neil Fortune & Aimée Terburg will have their solo show at Gray Contemporary.

Neil Fortune: Colorful ribs and guts of Adam

Fortune creates works with a strong interest in the social dimension of art objects. Touching upon different media and artist positions, from sculpture to architecture, paintings to performance, having as a common thread a strong engagement with social dilemmas, he crosses boundaries between disciplines. His research is mainly developed in the studio, a preferred locus in which his practice unfolds for the public space. At Gray Contemporary Fortune exhibits a series of sculptures suspended in a liminal space between painting and sculpture.

Neil Fortune presents a compelling series of works that he describes as hybrid sculpture. The works are sewn on a machine, made of textile, polyester-fiber, isolation foam and a variable mixture of paints, varnish, wood-glue, many of the material he would use to construct paintings and sculpture. He dips the textile into liquid paint. This procedure is repeated until the paint dries. These works first emerged as experiment at a time Fortune was simultaneously working on two projects: a series of his Social Sculpture (that is made of white textile sewn on a machine to be arranged on the gallery floor, setup to invite visitors to engage in a physical dialog with the sculpture), and his architectural painting done on canvas (depicting large and empty spaces mainly behind the scene of a situation, such as exhibition openings or theater stages). He got the idea to separate one of the sewn cylinders forms from the Social Sculpture to create a hybrid work that bridges the liminal space between the two different disciplines. It is capsulated in these works with a degree of serenity and clear minimal form.

His use of colors and the way he titles the works comes from an intuitive perception. Titles such as One Of Those Things (for a black and white work) Golden Crust on an Apple Pie (for a yellow work). These are fragments obtained from songs, poems, films or something he saw in the streets. By separating the sewn cylinder, he uncovered a space of possibility for experimentation. He wishes that these minimal objects in their own majestic way will slow you down, just for a moment, so you can really experience them. As a result his first sculptures, shown in the ‘Summer Show 2017’ at Nieuw Dakota & Francis Boeske Project (NL, Amsterdam), won the jury price.

Aimée Terburg, untitled (#43), acrylic / varnish on polyester, 60” x 42” x 1,5”, 2018.

Aimée Terburg: Tending Shapes – Bending Colors

Building on the history of Formalism and Minimalism, Aimée Terburg’s subjective setting with color and composition transcends in a reflective, defining process she wants to transfer to the viewer.

In her new series of paintings Terburg atypically glazes opaque layers of acrylic, a fast-drying paint, only using matte tints of red, yellow and blue in multiple one-hit layers. In the limited time frame she glazes a tint per corner, the first on a black underlayer, leaving no brush markings at first sight. This results in a surface where the colors blend on the canvas, enhanced by the black underlayer shining through. Unpainted colors optically emerge, the sides of the painting reveal the technique, and the chevron pattern in varnish directs the reflection of light. As the viewer moves or surrounding light conditions alter, color nuances change and the pattern appears or disappears.

The skies in the comic series ‘Lucky Luke’ (Morris, 1923 – 2001, Belgium), actual skygazing, gradients of digital color pickers, different meanings of the chevron sign, art genres Color Field or Hard Edge: they all exist parallel in the dynamic of Aimée Terburg’s painting process in this series. It is her encounter of ‘maker – surface – object’ where it leads to a simplicity that catches this. The subtle shifts in perception create an interaction between viewer and work. Terburg’s paintings invite taking different distances and angles, leaving behind the transposition of color or genre in language; highlighting the moment of perception itself.

About the artists

Neil Fortune (b. 1983) is a Georgetown Guyana-born, Dutch artist based in Amsterdam (NL). Fortune started his former studies at the Nola Hatterman Art Academy in Paramaribo Suriname where he was trained in drawing and painting before moving to the Netherlands with a scholarship, offered by the Dutch government, to study Fine Arts at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam. In recent years, Fortune’s works have been the subject of solo and group exhibitions at institutions such as MUHKA Antwerp (Belgium), TENT Rotterdam (the Netherlands), Summer Show Gemeente Museum Den Haag (the Netherlands), C&H-Gallery Amsterdam (the Netherlands). In 2017 his works were nominated winners of the Summer Show 2017 hosted at Nieuw Dakota & Francis Boeske Project (the Netherlands). Galerie23 (the Netherlands) was the host of his first and second solo exhibitions in 2013 and 2016. Fortune’s latest solo exhibition, Distorted Reality, was exhibited 2018 in the Polar Room at W139 in Amsterdam. While his most resent group exhibition ‘Dutch Colorist 2019 was shown at Dedee Shattuck gallery in Westport Massachusetts (USA). Fortune is currently working on new projects for his upcoming group- and solo exhibition in the Netherlands.

Aimée Terburg (Groningen, the Netherlands) is from Dutch / Surinamese origin, born and raised in the North of the Netherlands. Catching the essence of experiencing a landscape started her fascination for spatiality and perception; how we relate to space and object. Terburg graduated Cum Laude at Art Academy Minerva in Groningen and has exhibited both nationally and internationally. Recent selected exhibitions include Big Circle – Exposition #2, Kyiv, (UKR); RNOP – Five Walls, Melbourne (AUS); Art The Hague – Art fair with MURALS Inc. (NL); Gray Contemporary, Houston, (US, solo); Gallery Hein Elferink, (NL, solo); Transmitter, New York City (US debut); Gallery Crelan, Brussels (BE); ruimteCAESUUR, Middelburg (NL, solo); Summer Exhibition – Royal Academy of Arts, London (UK); Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen (DK). Her art was nominated for the International Solo Award of the Spring Exhibition, Copenhagen (DK), the biennial Nordwestkunst Price (DE), and the J.K. Egberts Award (NL). Her exhibited work was selected for the ‘Summer Exhibition Illustrated 2014’ catalogue of the Royal Academy of Arts (London, UK), and is among others included in corporate art collections of the Cooperative bank Crelan (BE), Dutch Gasunion (NL), Foundation ‘FB Oranjewoud’ (NL) and private collections. Terburg received a merit-based grant of Fund BKVB (now Mondriaan Fund).