Jantien Jongsma
Axel Linderholm
Derk Thijs
work on paper, paintings
12 April through 10 May 2026
vernissage Sunday 12 April at 16:00 hours
the artists are present
The exhibition centers on daily life, which is intensified by the artists and elevated to another level, making the ordinary seem enchanted. Jantien Jongsma shares this focus with Axel Linderholm and Derk Thijs and for longer had the idea of exhibiting together with them.
Jantien Jongsma (1965) previously exhibited works on paper in the gallery in which she dressed the people in her Slotervaart neighborhood in folkloric costumes and had them perform a kind of choreography of daily activities such as cycling, grocery shopping, and taking children to school. In her new brush drawings, spring takes center stage in the form of girls, flowers, her garden, and her neighborhood. She depicted the girls from memory, from the time she taught at the local secondary school. They possess a touching vulnerability and openness, drawing floral still lifes or just hang around in the classroom. Compared to her earlier work built up from several layers, the new brush drawings are very direct and light in tone.
Axel Linderholm (1981, Stockholm) lives and works in Gouda. His paintings feature genres like portraits, landscapes, houses and interiors that are connected to his own life. The buildings and landscapes where he lived in Berlin, Vilnius, and Manchester also bear witness to his development as a person and an artist.
An interior with his young son in a chair, people playing chess, or a park with undulating treetops take on an almost magical character through the use of intense blues and greens. He is also aware of art history and the tradition of painting. One can recognize motifs from the work of Matisse for example but also the way in which naive painters conceive space, which he translates to his own paintings.
For Derk Thijs (1977) too the observation of his direct surroundings is important. For a time he had a studio in IJmuiden, where the cluttered architecture of the harbor and the fluid forms in the water fascinated him. In his work, he attempts to link his observations to his inner experience to achieve what he calls the merging of the inner and outer world. Sometimes he also literally depicts the observer, such as the frog at the bottom of the image painting a grazing deer in the center of the picture. In other works, he places an alien-like figure at a stove, thereby imbuing the everyday with a certain alienation. Because of the sparse and brushy paint application the image acquires a shimmering quality, like a sun-drenched room by Pierre Bonnard.
Derk Thijs is represented by Galerie Onrust. In 2004 he won the Prix de Rome for drawing and printmaking.
