Thu, Dec 4 - Sun, Dec 7  2014

From December 4-7, 2014 LMAK Projects will present Popel Coumou, and Black & White Gallery will present a solo booth by Michael van den Besselaar at Pulse Miami Beach.

About LMAK Projects & Popel Coumou

LMAK Projects is pleased to present work by Popel Coumou (Dutch, 1978), who recently had her first solo exhibit in the U.S. at LMAK in New York. Popel’s work is characterized by the dichotomies within her visual language: the work is melancholic yet hopeful; solemn yet joyful; and within her work method: seemingly digitally manipulated the work is analog.

In her recent work, Coumou presented landscape photographs in which she added and layered paper shapes such as cubes, tetrahedrons and prisms and is able to attract the viewer’s attention because of the oddity and quirky presence of the object. She is able to hold the viewers’ attentiveness as she creates recognizable, and memorable places.

Besides the photographs, she has also created light boxes in which she pushes the narrative and personable into the abstract. The light source in the light box can be controlled by the viewer and allow to see various stages of the work. The suprematist like abstractions are softened as the light starts to expose glimpses of a landscape or sunset and give a new sentiment to the structures as a whole.

In her photographs and in the light boxes, Popel is able to create the impression of a third dimension. Through the cast of light and the dramatic shadows created through the layers of paper, Popel controls the mood, setting, and space allowing the work to be between painterly abstraction and geometric photography.

About Michael van den Besselaar

Black & White Gallery / Projectspace is pleased to present a solo booth by Michael van den Besselaar. 

Shortly before his death in 1940, Walter Benjamin famously observed that “There is no document of civilization that is not at the same time the document of barbarism.” This apocalyptic yet redemptive concept of history deeply relates to Michael Van den Besselaar’s witty and wry observations on a range of familiar social subjects and events.

Michael Van den Besselaar lives and works in Paris, France. He graduated from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, The Hague, in The Netherlands (1988) and is the recipient of several prestigious awards, such as the Haagse Salon Publics Prize, Haagse Salon Prize, the Grant Startstipendium, and the Karel Klinkenberg Prize. Van den Besselaar’s work is in major private and public collections, such as the Museum of Modern Art, Den Haag, The Netherlands, the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam, The Netherlands and others.

Michael has been represented by Black & White Gallery since 2007.