The International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP) Fall Open Studios is a two-day exhibition of international contemporary art presented by the 37 artists and curators from 25 countries currently in residence.

Twice a year only, ISCP offers the public access to private artists’ and curators’ studios to view artwork and share one-on-one conversations. Celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, ISCP invites the public to engage in dialogue around contemporary art with arts professionals from across the globe. Concentrated in a three-story postindustrial loft building on the edge of Bushwick, ISCP supports the creative advancement of residents, with a robust program of individual workspaces and professional benefits.

This year’s edition includes the works of Dutch artists Esther Tielemans and Allard van Hoorn.

Esther Tielemans

In her work, Esther Tielemans (1976, Helmond, the Netherlands) reflects on the fundaments of painting. With mirroring monochromes, references to landscape painting executed on wooden panels composed in space, she explores the third dimension of the flat canvas and challenges the viewer to physically relate to her work. A central aspect in Tielemans’ recent work is the subjective sensation and memory of a landscape. The loose movement in her brushstrokes seems to hint at a cloudy sky. However, it is not the depiction that counts here, but the reminiscence and sensation that a landscape could evoke. The panels have angular cut-outs placed in them, as pixels from the background that have been magnified: images in images, similar to how remembrance may become fragmented in time, and certain memories remain more vivid than others. The cut-outs suggest a layered spatiality without actually emerging from the flat surface, thus coinciding the abstraction in her previous work with a dynamic, painterly stroke. Often, Tielemans will capture this opposition by placing smooth monochromes, glossed with a shiny epoxy resin, across from her colourful paintings. The mirroring surfaces softly reflect the surrounding space, viewer included, making it impossible to escape the impressive composition and actively merging the work with its surroundings. Now, that composition can be found in the paintings themselves: a silent tension between abstraction and loose brush stroke, between flat surface and three dimensionality.

Untitled 15 & 14 (2018) © Esther Tielemans

Allard van Hoorn

Allard van Hoorn investigates relationships to our environment incorporating the disciplines of architecture, design, music and dance. He visually, acoustically and spatially transcodes our usage and perception of cities and nature in order to question preconceptions and experiences of the spaces we live and work in. Through mapping and the subsequent re-ordering of embedded rituals, rules and routines in buildings and public spaces, he allows for reinterpretation of form and function taking into account the inherent impossibility of complete description of our world by manmade systems.

Allard van Hoorn – 032 Urban Songline (Excessive Machine) | Latitude: 41.693521° N – 41.693646° N / Longitude: 44.810989° E – 44.811070° E – 2nd Tbilisi Triennial, Tbilisi, Georgia – 2015

About ISCP

Founded in 1994 and celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, ISCP is now the fourth-largest visual arts residency program in the world and a global leader in the field of visual arts residency programs. ISCP supports the creative development of artists and curators, and promotes exchange through residencies and public programs. Housed in a former factory in Brooklyn, with 35 light-filled work studios and two galleries, ISCP is New York’s most comprehensive international visual arts residency program. ISCP organizes exhibitions, events and offsite projects, which are free and open to all, sustaining a vibrant community of contemporary art practitioners and diverse audiences.