Janknegt Gallery
booth 48

Janknegt Gallery presents at Art Rotterdam:

Anni Mertens
Julia Schewalie

Art Rotterdam
Van Nelle Factory
Van Nelleweg 1
3044 BC Rotterdam

www.artrotterdam.com

Anni Mertens is a Luxembourgish artist. She grew up in Luxembourg and pursued her studies later on at the Hogeschool voor de Kunsten HKU in Utrecht where she graduated in Fine Arts in July 2019. From 2020 she is doing her master at LUCA school of Arts, Gent, Ceramics and Glass. This year she will move to Rotterdam.

She uses ceramics, wood, plaster, concrete and a healthy dose of humour in her sculpture installations. Nothing is what it seems. She playfully bends, coats and twists materials in such a way that it is hard to distinguish what’s solid and what’s porous, what’s delicate and what’s not. The skeuomorphic objects that make up the installations find common ground in their relationship with the body. These objects situate themselves somewhere between extensions and analogies of the body, playing visual and spatial games as they form a trail, seeking poetic coherence between shape, colour and textures bending and flexing concrete and ceramics while exploring the limits of their material capacities. The inspiration of the play-drive or the play impulse, explains why there are always playful elements coming back in her installations. The intuition plays an important role during her process, so she follows the material and the material follows back. The assemblage of sculptures refer to our journeys which are filled with the unexpected, questioning how we grow throughout these journeys and do we ever outgrow the urge to play?

**Julia Schewalie (1988)**
Solar
Monocrystalline solar cells on wood, aluminium frame | 2020
50 x 40 cm

**Julia Schewalie (1988)**
Disk_white
(this work changes due to the UV light)
160 x 130 cm. | 50 x 40 cm.

**Julia Schewalie (1988)**
Charred Wood (detail)
Charred wooden sticks on wood, aluminium frame, 2020
160 x 130 cm

Julia Schewalie's work focuses on the reflection of light on color-neutral surfaces. The material used in each case, for example vinyl records, is thereby wrested from its original purpose. This is followed by the creative work process: she sorts, constructs, arranges, accurately cuts, composes small geometric parts into large surfaces, creates curvatures and restructures image surfaces. In this way the material appears sometimes hard, sometimes soft, without betraying its real state. Standing and above all in motion, it seduces the viewer into an interplay between construction and deconstruction. Changing reflections and reflections on the surface are always part of the work. The works capture the space including natural and artificial light and the viewer in an individual way. They change continuously and do not know any fixed state.

Julia Schewalie (born 1988) studied painting and sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich (Akademie der bildenden Künste, München) from 2009-2015 . Since then she has been working as a freelance artist. Her works are exhibited nationally and internationally.

Art Rotterdam
Donderdag 19 t/m zondag 22 mei 2022

Donderdag 19 mei 2022
11.00 – 19.00

Vrijdag 20 mei 2022
11.00 – 19.00

Zaterdag 21 mei 2022
11.00 – 19.00

Zondag 22 mei 2022
11.00 – 19.00

Art Rotterdam

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