Sunday, September 4, 2011

Exhibition "Now We Are Gone" by Chidi Onwuka












On Saturday September 10th at 16:00 the gallery RADAR Architecture & Art will start the exhibition 'Now We Are Gone showing works by the English photographer Chidi Onwuka. We cordially invite you to the opening of the show in the Rozengracht 77A.


Theme

The series of photos exhibited shows the interiors of two buildings in Amsterdam, that were about to be demolished: the former Post CS Gebouw and the Wibauthuis building on Wibautstr
aat. In this superb series, the photographer concentrates his attention on the remains of the buildings; capturing what the current conformity tends to forget or hide.

Unconventionality often leads to surprising results: in 1632 Rembrandt portrayed in his painting "The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp" in a completely new way until then, a professor who dissected a corpse in front of his students. Similarly Chidi Onwuka, referring to the buildings in question, speaks of a "wounded animal" that is about to die, and it is this particular “wound” that fascinates him.

The city as a whole is composed of a variety of buildings where the human activities take place. They are put onto a scale of importance where at the top we find the monument, par excellence untouchable and beautifully displayed, and at the bottom the buildings to be demolished, hidden behind anonymous scaffolding. And it is exactly on the latter subject that Chidi Onwuka wants to point his finger: on what is hidden and considered embarrassing by the common sense, trying to find the beauty that lies in the unusual.

The artist

Chidi Onwuka is an English born Nigerian, brought up in Oxford. He graduated in Architecture and studied Film Theory & Criticism. In 1989 he moved to Amsterdam were he now works and lives. The photographer has worked as an architect in Dutch studios (OMA, Neutelings Riedijk, West 8) and then as an interactive designer, art director and programmer.

Ocassionally he writes about architecture and urbanism. His true love in life though is to observe the world around him and in photography he has found the perfect outlet in which to express himself.

Sunday, August 7, 2011

Group exhibition 'summer on a solitary beach'














This summer Radar would like to invite you to a group exhibition of the artists that exhibited in the gallery in the last 6 month and one guest artist.

The artist represented will be :
Laser 3.14 (graffiti art)
Nisja (paintings)
Marcel Ozymantra (paintings)
Immo Jalass (digital paintings)
Steven Smith (photography )
+
Ikko To

The gallery is open every Friday and Saturday from 13:00 to 17:00. Come to visit us at the Rozengracht 77A.

collage by Marco Radar
photo of Laser 3.14 by Lisa Elsenburg

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Radar in The Guardian

Radar is featured in the The Guardian in "10 of the best independent galleries in Amsterdam"!
Have a look!
www.guardian.co.uk

Thursday, June 16, 2011

Cosy summer party on Friday 1st of July 'Paintings: a musical comment'

 Marcel Ozymantra: The Veil, oil on canvas, 35 x 30,  2010


















Radar would like to invite you to a special event on Friday the 1st of July: Paintings: a musical comment. The composer Vera van der Bie has written a musical comment to some paintings of the exhibition  Street | Spirit.
You are welcome from 20:00 for a short presentation, music and some drinks.

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Exhibition ‘Street | Spirit’ by Nisja and Marcel Ozymantra, May 28th - July 2nd 2011



Radar is proud to present it's 10th exhibition ‘Street | Spirit’ where the artists Nisja and Marcel Ozymantra will show all new works. You are cordially invited to the vernissage on the 28th of May at 17.00.

Theme

At this double exhibition two talented painters are presented at gallery Radar for the second time. Each one approaches the city from his/her own viewpoint. Nisja searches for the often hidden and not apparent spirituality that pervades life in an urban situation. Ozymantra dives in the crypts of personal experience of somebody who has ventured half his life close to the asphalt. Where Nisja elevates from the profane, Ozymantra looks for the biographical. Where in Nisja’s case the colors almost dissolve, Ozymantra confronts with intense outbursts. They meet each other in the streets and have a conversation about what it means to be human in the city, one of the greatest inventions of humanity.

The artists

Marcel Ozymantra

His aim as always is finding the balance where paint becomes image and is still paint, but in these paintings Ozymantra let go the idea of an uniform style. He chooses eclectic from the wide range of possibilities accumulated during his 19 years of experience. Fantasy, photo and directly observed reality join into something that’s more. These different elements enter into an uneasy relationship. In this way he creates a new world in which everything has purposeful friction. Between these elaborated canvases others hang with a more simple slant. It’s like there are two artists, one brutally direct and the other mysterious and subtle, but a true clash is absent, for both approach the canvas with the same thoroughness. Through incidental repainting and lots of dripping he demolishes the image in the search for the freshness of improvisation.
As subjects he uses divorce and confusion of the genders, mythical animal motives, helmets & masks, cityscapes of Amsterdam, India and other cities/places, the exaggerated superhero body.

Nisja

In the paintings of the young Polish artist Nisja department stores, industries, block of flats, empty spaces, parking places and abandoned fields form fields of color as seen from a bird's-eye view. Some buildings are shown in architectural perspective, some as floor plans, with few seemingly random details. All are united by the magic of a silent equilibrium.
This equilibrium seems precarious but at the same time it invites to meditation and contemplation of a world without time. Though this world is a reflection of places lived or seen by the artist and is not an ideal world, it's elements are not beautiful or eye-catching. The industrial agglomerations or the big dormitory quarters of post-socialistic cities seem rather symbols of a long gone or fake prosperity. In the paintings they have been transformed by the spirit of the artist through a process of purification, simplification and abstraction and put in a place that can’t be found on any map, ascetic and silent (like some of the images by Stanley Kubrick). It is a place made of voids and solids, without movement, sound or time. But it also is not a post-nuclear landscape. Life is apparent but is standing still for a moment of contemplation.
They are interior landscapes that come to life through a sophisticated use of colours, transparencies, delicate lines and simple shapes.

During the exhibition it's possible to listen to compositions that musician/composer Vera van der Bie made to accompany some of Ozymantra's paintings. She plays for, among other things, Quartet Quenetique (www.qq4.nl).

Friday, April 29, 2011

Queen's Day at Radar



Kunst & Koffie for your bloodstream!

While you're enjoying the crazy city have a nice Italian coffee and a look at the new exhibition of Laser 3.14 'This Cold Metal Future'!

Sunday, April 10, 2011

Grand opening of the exhibition 'This Cold Metal Future' by Laser 3.14 at Radar



On Saturday April 23rd at 17.00 the gallery RADAR Architecture & Art will start the exhibition of the well known street-poet Laser 3.14 entitled ‘This Cold Metal Future’. In occasion of the ten years of his writing the artist will present a series of brand new works, never shown before.

We cordially invite you to the opening party of the show at our new location, Rozengracht 77 A in Amsterdam. Music selection by DJ Hans Plasma, Laser 3.14 and Marco Radar.

“The Future Is Now The Future Is Set To Be”

Laser 3.14 has been writing the streets of Amsterdam for 10 years. Today more than ever his science-fiction/cyberpunk tags are a perfect commentary to a world in which the future predicted by the fathers of science-fiction is now happening. The artist is fascinated by the fact that the future we dreamed of as children, represented in science-fiction books, movies, comics, animation, music, we are actually living today.

“This Cold Metal Future”

In Laser 3.14’s work written on the streets in the last 10 years one can see both admiration and at the same time a subtle criticism towards our futuristic world dominated by technology. Everything that surrounds us today is ruled by the binary code as rightly mentioned by Laser 3.14. That on one hand gives us unseen possibilities of communication, while on the other it exposes us to an incredible amount of information and a constant control of every aspect of our lives. We are becoming “Slaves Of The Digital Overflow” to quote the artist.

These issues have evolved and matured over the years in the work of the artist and are the center of the exhibition This Cold Metal Future.

The soundtrack of the exhibition will be strictly Post-Punk and New Wave music because the same message of admiration and criticism of the technological world has been and still is expressed by many bands of this genre since the early 80's.

Contact person Laser 3.14:
Manuela Klerkx
manuelaklerkx@gmail.com

Monday, March 21, 2011

Opening of the exhibition by Immo Jalass 'Distorted cities to rob and lie"

On Saturday March 26 at 17:00 the gallery RADAR Architecture & Art will start the exhibition 'Distorted Cities to Rob and Lie', showing digital paintings by the German artist Immo Jalass.

We cordially invite you to the opening of the show in the NEW LOCATION of the Radar Gallery in the Rozengracht 77A.



The images presented by the artist are imaginary landscapes, abstract expanses or shots of cities that seem to be taken on another planet.

Immo Jalass starts with a free composition, photos or parts of them, sometimes images of a city and details of buildings. In this sense he "steals" images from reality. Later on (in front of his "digital canvas") he begins to treat the images, to distort them, to cut them, to remove or add details, colors and elements from other photos or from god knows where. This process of "mystification" of the reality leads to the creation of an image that overtakes and goes beyond reality itself.

In his bewildered landscapes Jalass captures the grandeur of the space between the speed of light and the perpetual change and through the computer he freezes and crystallizes this vision into an image that takes on aspects of meditation and contemplation, or to put it in the words of the artist into "images that rest in the movement”.

Saturday, January 8, 2011

Closing of the exhibition 'structure|nature' by Steven Smith


On the 15th of January the exhibition 'structure|nature' by Steven Smith will close.

In occasion of the closing of the gallery doors, Radar will open from 16:00 till 19:00 for a pleasant finish with some drinks.

Hope to see you there!