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Lbf Contemporary: They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? A presentation of works by Lawrence Perry
Writer: Hamish Strudwick
Now on at Lbf Contemporary:
They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?
A presentation of works by Lawrence Perry
10 January – 12 February
With They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?, LBF Contemporary continues its streak of showcasing young artists with remarkable flair. This latest exhibition features a painter whose wit, literary charm, and technical mastery create a compelling visual language. Perry’s work dazzles with its theatricality, each canvas alive with finely staged gestures, rich textures, and exquisitely rendered details. The luminous precision of his brushwork is particularly evident in the textures of fabric and the nuanced warmth of his subjects’ skin, revealing an artist who understands both the grandeur and intimacy of paint.
Perry’s canvases present a series of self-contained narratives, each charged with an enigmatic sense of action and intention. A young man, clad in olive britches and a dark amethyst-blue embroidered jacket, sits cross-legged, peacock feather quill in hand, poised in pensive thought. A girl in white gleefully extends a lifeless swan by the neck, kicking one stockinged foot behind her. Elsewhere, a figure adorned with a small red star-shaped tattoo clutches a handful of jewel-toned cherries, a single fruit slipping through their fingers. In the exhibition’s larger composition, seven figures—arranged in three pairs and one solitary form—stand in various states of quiet grief and despondency, locked in silent embraces.
It is impossible to view these paintings as anything but scenes, or tableaux, so deliberate is their composition. The evocative expressions, dramatic spotlighting, and compressed staging propel them into the realm of the theatrical. One might feel as though they have stumbled into a play already in progress, searching for the missing prologue. Yet, unlike ancient theatre, where a chorus would interject with narrative clarity, Perry offers no such resolution. Instead, the works leave us suspended in mystery, caught between what is shown and what is left untold.
Perry draws on a deep well of historical imagery—Judith and Holofernes, Leda and the Swan, Adam and Eve, and the Commedia dell’Arte—yet his approach is far from merely referential. By distilling these age-old narratives into contemporary, intimate moments, he seamlessly fuses the classical with the present, reanimating these myths with a distinctly modern theatricality. His figures, though steeped in history, feel immediate and familiar, embodying the timelessness of human drama.
Lawrence Perry (b.1999, Singapore) graduated from the Slade School of Art in 2021, specializing in painting. And in Perry’s hands, painting is not just a craft but a performance of its own.
‘Takes on the Sublime’ @ Night Café
Title of Article: ‘Takes on the Sublime’ @ Night Café
Writer: Hamish Strudwick
Sam Werkhoven, Gina Kuschke, and Alexandre Zhu have works shown in Takes on the Sublime, curated by gallery director Maribelle. Takes on the Sublime will be on view from January 28, 2025, until February 21, 2025.
The title of this show makes specific reference to the distinctly historical philosophy of Edmund Burke. The Sublime, a concept first articulated by Burke in 1757, has since shaped Romanticism, influencing Turner and Friedrich, Coleridge and Wordsworth, Shelley and Kant. Traditionally, the Sublime describes an encounter with the vast, the overwhelming, and the incomprehensible—something so immense it induces awe and terror in equal measure.
Romanticism finds its roots in this philosophy, expressing both the awe-inspiring and the terrifying power of nature. It is the unfathomable vastness of the universe that provokes fear and wonder in us, an emotional and cognitive response that Burke argued was pre-rational—an instinctive reaction that seizes us before reason can mediate our experience. This tension, between fear and exhilaration, pushes us to seek out the Sublime again and again, forcing us to grapple with forces beyond human control.
Yet in Takes on the Sublime, this concept undergoes a transformation. Rather than presenting the Sublime as an external, infinite expanse—as seen in the storms of Turner or the mountains of Friedrich—this exhibition turns inward. Here, the Sublime exists not in the grandeur of nature but within the unconscious mind, the fragmented nature of perception, and the instability of memory. In the age of Freud, awe and terror are no longer merely external forces; they reside within us, surfacing in dreams, repression, and subjective experience.
This shift is not simply a stylistic choice but a philosophical one. In these works, pictorial space collapses, horizons disappear, and external vastness is replaced by psychological depth. Where the Romantics sought to capture nature’s terrifying grandeur, Werkhoven, Zhu, and Kuschke present a Sublime that is intimate, introspective, and phenomenological. Rather than confronting the infinite, we confront ourselves.
Sam Werkhoven’s silhouetted foliage paintings evoke an eerie stillness, suffused with the melancholy of dusk. In Sabotage Lane and Demi Monde, painterly bushes emerge against murky blue grounds, while in Finest Hour #3, the glow of distant light is obscured by fog. Traditionally, twilight serves as a moment of transition—a time between knowing and unknowing, reality and dream. Werkhoven capitalizes on this ambiguity, using obscured light sources and softened edges to collapse the visual field. Rather than offering the viewer an expansive landscape to lose themselves in, he presents single branches instead of whole forests, pulling us into an inward contemplation. The vast external Sublime of the past is replaced with a Sublime of psychological uncertainty, where perception is clouded, and reality remains just beyond our grasp.
Alexandre Zhu’s monochrome graphite works take this disorientation even further. In Please turn off all electronic devices (2), we are presented with a tilted, unstable view from an airplane window—an unsettling vantage point where grounding is impossible. In Hadal (17), the impenetrable darkness of the sea dissolves into void-like opacity. These compositions reference the Romantic Sublime’s obsession with the ocean’s abyssal depths, yet Zhu denies us any sense of scale or spatial certainty. The viewer is not asked to gaze upon nature’s vastness but to confront their own psychological depths. Freud’s concept of the uncanny (das Unheimliche)—where the familiar becomes strange—permeates these works, transforming the traditional Sublime into an unsettling confrontation with the subconscious.
Gina Kuschke’s rhythmic abstract paintings introduce a different approach to this inward Sublime. In Valley of Dew, Girl Picking Seaweed, and Mother II, she mines personal memories and imagined forms, translating them into gestural landscapes that blur the boundaries between representation and abstraction. As the viewer’s eye traces the fragmented contours, familiar shapes—perhaps a reclining figure or a half-remembered dream—emerge from the composition before dissolving again. This process of ocular disentanglement mirrors Freud’s theory of free association, where the subconscious mind imposes meaning on ambiguous forms. Kuschke does not map a physical landscape but rather the shifting terrain of memory, identity, and perception.
Curator and gallery director Maribelle Bierens brings together three emerging artists who reinterpret the Sublime through a contemporary, psychological lens. Rather than the grandiose terror of nature, these works evoke a phenomenological Sublime, where perception itself becomes unstable, and the self is the primary landscape of exploration. Here, the Sublime is not something we gaze upon but something we experience—a confrontation with the fragmented, the unconscious, and the intangible depths of the human mind.
Curator and gallery owner Maribelle Bierens brings together three wonderfully talented emerging artists with the sensitivity of an art historian. In this show, the sublime, a romantic philosophical subject, and its traditional language of representation are turned inwards onto the interior realm of the mind.
Sam Werkhoven has a collection of silhouetted foliage paintings in this show. His painterly bushes are set against dusky hued grounds in blue or yellow.
Glitch: Tjebbe Beekman’s New Works Explore the Pictorial Language of Thought and Emotion
Glitch: Tjebbe Beekman’s New Works Explore the Pictorial Language of Thought and Emotion
Show Title: Glitch
Gallery: GRIMM Gallery, Amsterdam
Artist Featured: Tjebbe Beekman
Writer: Grace Jamieson Bianciardi
In a world flooded by information, where differing fragments of knowledge can overwhelm an individual’s senses, Tjebbe Beekman’s latest exhibition at GRIMM Gallery in Amsterdam offers a compelling, visceral exploration of hostile strength and the human condition across abstraction. Running from January 17 through March 8 (2025), Glitch marks Beekman’s fifth solo show at the gallery. This exhibition demonstrates the evolution and deep emotional research of the artist’s rich engagement with the painting medium as a form of philosophical inquiry or inspection.
Beekman (born 1972) is no stranger to using his canvases as battlegrounds for both intellectual and emotional discourses. Moreover, the artist’s work invites the viewer into a world where the rules of time, space, and language seem constantly in motion and evolution.
Encapsulating the exhibition’s wider meaning by semi figuratively portraying explorations of different human figures—depicted singularly and within pairs—caught between states of clarity and distortion is standout piece titled The artist is there. This work presents a figure in simple painter’s clothing, where the entangled fingers become the focus of the canvas and allude to a moment of indecision or anxiety. Mirroring these emotions across the fractured forms, dynamic brushstrokes and blooming green, vanishing the figure’s head, the artist speaks to a more profound sentiment— a search for meaning within an elusive and external shifting landscape.
Beekman’s focus on the “dismemberment” of the human form to communicate strong internal emotions, continues in works like Symbiosis XIII. This triptych breaks down the human emotion into a series of enigmatic pieces depicting three differing figures. Elements like floating pom-poms, cream-colored tights, and the vivid use of color, presents a veiled reference to past art genres. These references—to Paul Cézanne and Pablo Picasso—create a surreal, almost dreamlike atmosphere where the viewer feels both drawn to recognizable forms and detached from the unknown. Moreover, these figures seem to live in a world of their own, with rules that defy logic and forms, and linger between figuration and abstraction. The result of all these elements is a strangely hypnotic feeling of displacement, as if the viewer is transiting across an undefined space.
This disorientation is heightened by Beekman’s use of color and texture. Thick layers of acrylic and emulsion—often mixed with grit or sand—gives the canvas’ surface a sculptural quality. One approach and interpretation to Beekman’s work is the resistance of the canvas impeding the viewer to comprehend the painted scene. The manipulation of the smooth surface to a textural exterior reinforces the underlying tension in his work that exists within the painting and the temporal moment the viewer is experiencing the work.
A key component for this body of work is the influence of philosopher Ignaas Devisch, particularly his concept of the “information epidemic”. Devisch speaks of living in an age where vast amounts of data overwhelm us yet leave us with little clarity or understanding. This sense of overstimulation and confusion is embodied in Beekman’s chaotic, fragmented canvases, where splashes of paint resemble digital glitches or fragmented bytes of data. The paintings themselves become metaphorical errors, an aesthetic reflection of our inability to make sense of the endless stream of information that bombards us daily.
What makes this work pertinent to modern times, is that these “glitches” don’t only speak to the contemporary moment but delve into a timeless concept of human existence. Whilst Beekman actively engages with the visual culture of the past—through references to classical figures and established artists—Beekman’s art presents a threshold to the present suggesting that painting is not only a medium but a language.
Georg Wilson @ Pilar Corrias
As part of Gallery 2, an occasional program of exhibitions by non-represented artists at Pilar Corrias Conduit Street, Pilar Corrias presents The Last Oozings, a solo exhibition by Georg Wilson.
Wilson’s handling of paint reveals itself in a tight swirling of the brush that unites the objects in her work in a shared, palpating rhythm. Her landscapes are populated entirely by the organic; there is nothing inert or disunified from the whole. The canvases all emit a low, resonant, and sensuous hum—a harmony not of stillness, but of self-sufficiency, as though the natural forms depicted breathe in unison. Wilson’s paintings have an indolent sap that seeps from their very core to the outer skin. This is a world saturated with ripeness, its surfaces swollen with fecundity. Her nostalgia for the pre-industrial past evokes the handcrafted sensibilities of William Morris and the Pre-Raphaelites—not merely an aesthetic reverie, but a deeper meditation on a world untouched by mechanization, where nature is untroubled by human interference.
And yet, though we stand before these paintings, we are not permitted entry. Wilson constructs a world that is wholly self-contained, a spectacle for us to behold but never inhabit. The absence of pathways, linear perspective, or any breach in the scene’s surface reinforces this detachment. Unlike the expansive landscapes of Romanticism, which invite the viewer into their depths, Wilson’s world folds inward, turned entirely upon itself. Her warm, autumnal palettes are not an invitation but the spectacle of nature gorging on itself, a final feast upon all it has gleaned from summer’s incandescent scents and sweets.
Wilson’s wildlings, her little figures, are both grotesque and sensual, occupying the same liminal space as mythic creatures and medieval woodcut figures—recognizably human yet distinctly inhuman. They are our analogues in this world, but she makes them just alien enough to resist sentimentality. In their stout proportions and physiognomic purity, they recall putti or the untouched inhabitants of Ovid’s Golden Age—creatures who have yet to scar the land, unspoiled by the dictates of modernity. The Anglo-American sphere, long alienated from coexistence with the natural world, has forgotten how to inhabit such a place, and Wilson does not extend the offer to return.
There is a richness to these works’ art-historical and literary allusions, drawing on the rococo, the pre-Raphaelite, and the domestic aesthetics of William Morris. But how Wilson engages with her references is uneven—sometimes transformative, sometimes merely reverential. The painter’s renegotiation of Millais’s Ophelia in The Wet (After Ophelia) converts the drowned heroine into an odalisque, her body resting in the shallows with a gaze that rivals Manet’s Olympia for its directness. Yet, beyond this recontextualization, the work stops short of interrogating its source material; it does not critique Ophelia’s gendered passivity nor redefine her as an active agent in her fate. In This Stunt Oak (After Fragonard), Wilson borrows the rococo artist’s curated wilderness but removes its structured artifice—the swing, the servant, the debutante—all are gone. In their place, one of Wilson’s creatures reclines in a bush, its expression dejected. And yet, the inversion remains unclear in purpose. If the lush artificiality of Fragonard’s world is stripped away, what remains but an empty gesture toward its absence?
Wilson is at her strongest when she allows her own visual language to take precedence over citation. Her palette, thick with warm ochres and deep umbers, lends her works an autumnal sensuality that borders on the overripe, a world on the cusp of its own undoing. Her dense, organic surfaces reject the expansiveness of Romantic landscapes, keeping the viewer at bay. This is where Wilson’s power lies—not in mere homage to historical painting, but in the singularity of her painterly indulgence, a world wholly enclosed within itself. She does not invite us in, nor does she need to.
White Cube to Cultural Nexus
From White Cube to Cultural Nexus: Sustainability and Community-Driven Innovation in Latin American Galleries
Sustainability of gallery spaces through adapting the model to the community around them
Celeste Melgar
“The Latin American continent is a plurinational, pluriethnic, pluricultural and plurilinguistic entity which embraces almost 570 million inhabitants. Any attempt to understand its contemporary artistic manifestations must encompass such multidimensional diversity of experiences if it is not to succumb to the old exoticist and essentialist model based on the mistaken premise that Latin American unity and authenticity.”
- Iria Candela
It all started with my dissertation, as I focused my efforts in the initial step called figuring out how I could define the Art Ecosystem before I could write and research what composes it and what are things that would make it successful or volatile . I realized that the country I was focused on, Panamá, was not only my home country but also a magnificent case study. Demonstrating the shifts, changes, closures, success stories and developments are all part of the creation of an Arts Ecosystem as through these journeys galleries, artists, art enthusiasts and buyers were capable of understanding what is important to be sustainable and long lasting in the arts ecosystem of a Latin American country such as Panamá.
Once the dissertation was brought to an end, I felt it was much more of a beginning to understand how the term Art Ecosystem is specific in both definition and context to each country, region and culture. It was evident that the success of the galleries and art institutions in Panamá was based on the community, the celebration of culture and the country’s economic pulse. There were little to no white cube-like galleries found, the appeal wasn’t towards white walls, cold floors, and striking cool toned lights. Even when there was a close link to the white walled gallery, such as Diablo Rosso in Panamá, there is an importance in involving the community, even the people that commute past the gallery everyday. By making the gallery cover its entire entrance, walls and door be made out of inventing glass. Glass was precisely selected to be an accessible space where art could be looked at from the daily commuters, the benches in the park, the visitors walking in Casco Viejo and the art enthusiast seeking a new experience. Therefore, what is the trend I found through the analysis of the different galleries and art institutions in Panamá was the slight adjustments that each had made in order to create a sense of community within the gallery, either by supporting Panamanian artists, by hosting events, through education or through partnerships with foundations.
This then expands into the understanding of how Latin American galleries seek similar concepts, with a spin to the white cube like space other galleries in Latin America just like in Panamá are seeking to create a sense of community and support for what is local. Why is this the case? There is no straightforward answer as the assumption through research and differentiation is the way in which culture also affects how the Art Ecosystem is built, how people interact with art and what is the culture around learning and questioning the arts. Therefore as most of the countries in Latin America are still considered young countries there is still constant development on what makes for a sustainable art industry, which would allow for its varied
Sources
Everton Barreiro, “Latin American Art: Beyond the Fairs, Galleries, and Stereotypes,” Everton Barreiro, February 15, 2019, https://www.evertonbarreiro.com/articles/2019/2/15/latin-american-art-beyond-the-fairs-galleries-and-stereotypes.
Can Museums Invest? Ethics, Strategy, and Opportunity
Finding new strands of income to make the institutions sustainable Celeste Melgar “The modern museum has multiple purposes – to curate and preserve, to research, and to reach out to the public. They challenge us and ask us to question our assumptions about the past or the world around us.”
- Kate Williams (British Historian and Author)
Museums hold significant cultural and social responsibilities as institutions dedicated to conservation, education, trend-setting, cultural exploration, and the sharing of human narratives. Their role is essential to the sustainability and growth of a country’s art ecosystem. In recent years, however, museums have increasingly sought alternative sources of income beyond government funding and entrance fees, as budget constraints have tightened. Prominent institutions like the British Museum, the Smithsonian, and the National Gallery have explored new financial strategies, including ethical investing, to adapt to these challenges.
This shift toward ethical investment reflects a growing awareness of the broader impact that financial decisions can have on society. According to the Upstart Co-Lab report, Cultural Capital: The State of Museums and Their Investing, 61 museums in the United States have actively considered investment opportunities. A key trend among these institutions is the prioritization of aligning investments with their core values, a reflection of the profound cultural role museums play within society. Their financial choices, therefore, are not only aimed at generating returns but also at fostering a more ethical and socially responsible environment.
Figure 1. Factors Driving the Conversation for Museums to invest, Upstart Co-Lab, pg.7
What makes an Ethical Investment Principles?
Source: ICOM (International Council of Museums) Code of Ethics for Museums
According to the Financial Resources Section of the ICOM Code of Ethics for Museums, the foundational requirement for museum funding is the establishment of a written policy that reflects the museum’s purpose as a custodian of both “tangible and intangible natural and cultural heritage” (ICOM). If museums can sustain themselves and enhance the visitor experience through the ethical investment of funds that have been appropriately and transparently raised, it aligns with both ethical principles and factual correctness. This approach supports the museum’s mission while optimizing the preservation of heritage.
Museum Economics
“In the context of museums, a particularly important variant is to take psychological aspects into account: individuals are not totally rational and are sometimes subject to anomalies, and they may to some extent be other-regarding and act in a pro-social way.” (Bruno S. Frey, Stephan Meier)
Key areas of museum decision-making include collection management (whether to sell or acquire new pieces), pricing strategies (balancing free entry vs. revenue maximization), and commercial activities (e.g., museum shops and restaurants). Museums often charge low or no admission to attract visitors, but they may use price discrimination strategies (e.g., charging tourists more or setting higher prices for special exhibits).
Museums Investing their Endowments
Museums may deploy their endowments in accordance with their Endowment Usage Policy to safeguard the financial stability of the institution. Currently, many museums have been allocating their endowment funds to hedge funds, bonds, and private equity. Prominent institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met), and the British Museum have adopted these investment strategies to establish a robust financial foundation.
Investing endowments provides museums with protection against inflation by enabling them to diversify their portfolios. This diversification serves as a safeguard, mitigating the impact of potential declines in the value of money.
Restrictions / Holdbacks
One of the things that is causing the museums to hold back from investing their endowments is the restraints on how it is not something the museum can show returns in a limited time line. In addition to the strong incentive for museums to align their investments with their values and mission.
Benefits of Museums Investing
“Using public funding, they have generated substantial private investment to rebuild, remain relevant and become truly outstanding. On average, national museums earn almost half of their own income (45.6%).” – National Museum Directors Council
Sources
“How Museums Can Ethically Invest Their Money.” 2021. The Art Newspaper – International Art News and Events. March 30, 2021. https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2021/03/30/how-museums-can-ethically-invest-their-money.
Frey, Bruno S., and Stephan Meier. 2006. “Chapter 29 the Economics of Museums.” Edited by Victor A. Ginsburg and David Throsby. ScienceDirect. Elsevier. January 1, 2006. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1574067606010295.
International Council of Museums. ICOM Code of Ethics for Museums. Accessed September 11, 2024. https://icom.museum/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/ICOM-code-En-web.pdf.
Museums Association. “Museum Funding.” Accessed September 11, 2024. https://www.museumsassociation.org/campaigns/advocacy/museum-funding/.
Notes
If you can give specific examples of what these institutions are investing in that would be great.
On one hand you define an ethical investment as an investment that is ethical because it is consistent with the institution’s principles of ethics i.e. as long as they have in mind their first priority to preserve heritage. That’s fine but a weaker point imo.
On the other hand you define an ethical investment as an investment that does some social good. Great, this needs examples to back up that this is what they are doing. I.e., what are they investing in that simultaneously benefits the community and returns profit.
I feel like No.2 is a more important point to focus on if we’re talking ethics. Where is the money they are investing coming from? If it is public money then the public should have an interest in what that money is being used for. If the museum is investing in oil, tobacco, and weapons that’s bad.
We need to really define what is meant by investing and funding generation.
I.e. when your last quote says On average, national museums earn almost half of their own income (45.6%). That could mean that they earn lots through their gift shop / cafe / ticket sales rather than a stocks and shares portfolio.
Once the first few things are tweaked to gain some real clarity, concision, and focus, the restraints and benefits section needs to be fleshed out.
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Lbf Contemporary: They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? A presentation of works by Lawrence Perry
