FRIA 40!
About this activity.
We are celebrating the 40th anniversary of FRIA, a milestone in the art world of the Northern Netherlands! On this occasion, the works of:
Hennie Broers, Esther Eggink, Gwendolyn van Essen, Happy van der Heide, Jehannes Hibma, Heine Noordstra, Elise Klinkert and Gert Jan Slotboom can be seen at Forma Aktua.
The works have the overarching theme: The desire for a more beautiful world!
Hennie Broers Silver as art
Her work is characterized by the often playful design in which precious metal is regularly combined with natural materials. In terms of design, Hennie has developed a very unique and recognizable style, in which the intricate sawing work will stand out. For her work, she has won the cultural entrepreneur prize of the North and the first prize of the European competition for goldsmiths working with sustainable bronze. Her work has recently been on display in Milan and Venice.
Esther Eggink It starts with drawing
Esther loves powerful, drawing-like lines and is constantly looking for the right balance between not quite finished and perfection. Her work includes both drawing and painting, in which she manages to portray the reaction to the sometimes intense current events with great empathy and feeling. The story of the people she portrays forms her starting point and is put on the canvas with great passion and color.
2023 Nomination Dutch Portrait Prize
2020 Stars on the canvas / Clairy Polak
Gwendolyn van Essen Longing for a more beautiful world
Gwendolyn makes drawings, paintings, graphics, photos and installations. Her work is about flora and fauna and mainly concerns wild flowers and birds, found in the countryside and the Wadden. Much of her work is in ink, washed ink, printing ink but also oil paint on all kinds of paper, canvas and panel. The mudflats, the beauty of the Wadden landscape and the birds are a special source of inspiration for her. The birds are a symbol of freedom: Birds in freedom and the birds of the Groningen countryside.
The drawings in ink and washed ink are made with East Indian ink, sepia and ink in various colours with pen and brush on paper.
Happy van der Heide In search of simplicity, beauty and harmony
Realising that the time is ripe for change, she experiments as an artist with recyclable, natural materials, such as the softness of textiles and felt.
They are mainly natural raw materials that are transformed into high-quality, new and recyclable art and objects after environmentally friendly processing and treatment. She is looking for simplicity, beauty and harmony. She often does not have to go far for this, which means that her ecological footprint does not leave deep traces:
Almost all natural raw materials that she uses for her works of art grow or are available in her own or nearby environment.
Jehannes Hibma Images with a story
Also works as a designer and monumental designer. After his education at the Vredeman de Vries art academy in Leeuwarden, he worked for many years as a designer of sets and props for open-air plays and theatre. After this period, he increasingly focused on making sculptures in stone, wood, steel, bronze and various, often unexpected materials. His sculptures are theatrical and tell a story.
Nowadays, his work is more socially critical, with projects such as ‘Theatre of Greed, Reuse and De Gjalp (the Scream)’ This is in response to the culture of greed, the excessive waste of raw materials and the unbridled exploitation of fellow human beings and our planet.
Heine Noordstra Silent harmonies
Examines relationships between architecture, landscape and environment, sometimes in their historical context. Transforming and harmonising feelings into monumental visual structures.
‘My work is about the spiritual and sensory experience. Representing reality that is not directly visible in silent harmonies. My work moves between abstract/expressionism and constructivism. Nature around us, the great landscapes and immaterial values such as light, silence, emptiness, in a mystical atmosphere, are in their monumental greatness sources of inspiration for me.’
Elise Klinkert Living in connection and harmony
On the one hand, Elise explores her inseparable connection with nature in her work, and can lose herself with care and love in depicting the landscape, nature and the elements. On the other hand, she explores how this overwhelming nature seems to be lost due to human intervention. Her paintings arise from a combination of different aspects: engagement, conversations, source research, a memory or fragments of a dream. The people and animals that Elise paints are time travelers who try to evoke a feeling, a romantic longing for a better world, a life in connection and harmony, with each other and the universe.
Gert Jan Slotboom Double feelings
Over the years, Gert Jan Slotboom has built up a powerful oeuvre of paintings. He is a painter who likes to work in series. These are characterized by wonder, desolation and loneliness. The double feelings are strong in his painting series Ecce Homo (see man). This series shows man in his naked, unprotected vulnerability. Lonely, painful, raw and without frills. Gerrt Jan works with minimal use of colour and bold brushstrokes, but at the same time richly detailed. Fellow human beings in whom we could also recognise ourselves.
Gert Jan graduated from the Utrecht School of the Arts in 1983.
Exhibition info:
Period Thu 03-04 to 04-05-2025
Opening exhibition Sun 06-04 at 16:00 by Renee Otter
Musical accompaniment Gerdie de Jong and Joris Collier
Background music during reception: Onno Loonstra
Opening hours Wed to Sun from 13:00 to 17:00
Galerie Forma Aktua.
Al decennia lang functioneert Forma Aktua Pinakotheek als een platform voor al het opkomend talent in Noord-Nederland. Tegelijk volgt de galerie ook de ontwikkelingen in de wereld van de reeds meer gevestigde kunstenaars op de voet.
Location.
Forma Aktua
Nieuwstad 10
tel 050 3133342
www.forma-aktua.nl/