Anna Hor has a material led practice that investigates the potential of materials, materiality and the agency of objects. She creates sculptures characterised by highly tactile surfaces and ambiguous materials that aim to bring back that child-like feeling of discovering something new. She also transforms the function of familiar objects to hold her unfamiliar sculptures in playful installations, which often include moving- image works developed from her sculptures.

By linking newly developed short videos of her sculptures with past experiences and memories, her work takes a more personal turn for the first time. Anna’s usually very tactile sculptures take on a new, ambiguous direction by being projected and enlarged into photographs of places she has visited in the past. Whilst new, organic and imaginary spaces are created, the materiality and size of the original sculptures becomes increasingly puzzling. Unable to exist outside of a screen, they also reflect on her time in the UK’s strict lockdown, where many people have become increasingly nostalgic, reminiscing and imagining a life outside of their homes again.

Born in Luxembourg, Annï Mertens is an artist living and working in Utrecht, The Netherlands. She uses ceramics, wood, plaster, concrete, colour and a healthy dose of humor in her sculpture installations. By playfully bending, coating and twisting materials, Mertens creates objects that seem both solid and not at the same time. Her sculptural objects reflect feelings of joy, states of movement and absurd existence. In her installations, that take the form of spatial assemblages inspired by public spaces like swimming pools or playgrounds, her sculptures play visual and spatial games, seeking poetic coherence between shape, colour and textures.

While first struggling with finding a place for herself in the overwhelming stream of online content, Annï Mertens tried to twist her perspective instead of going against it. Social media and other online platforms permit the production and circulation of a vast amount of images. Although in this virtual world, images tend to lose relation to the subject they represent. In a visual research, where she uses digital footage of her very tactile, physical sculptures, she transforms the original objects and shapes while exaggerating the use of the distortion tool. The result is a series of digital collages that document this process of distortion in an absurd visual language of shape and colour.

The work of Mona Schietekat comprises drawings, sculptures, found- and altered objects, prints, publications and prose. She approaches installations as a play where visitors can be guided by the artist, easing them into a specific state of being, thinking, moving and feeling. Her installations demand a direct view, an impartial, almost youthful curious observation, which has not yet been directed in any particular direction.

Mona is currently working on a video that proposes a unique language made up of drawings, sculptures and other objects. The video only appears to be instructive, and uses a similar language as educational videos for children. By juxtaposing drawings, sculptures and found objects with texts and other symbols, Schietekat experiments with interpretation and the suggestive link between image and text, while simultaneously questioning her own position as an artist. This exhibition shows an online version of the project that allows visitors to decide their own pace in an archive of short animations, drawings and collages.

“How do I free myself from limiting thoughts?”, Emmy Zwagers asks herself. She uses meditative techniques to explore her inner world. This liberating proces is important for her to be able to express herself, building illusionary spaces with paint and rediscovering the power of creation over and over again while doing so. Her paintings often revolve around her own physical gestures and brushstrokes and their relationship to both physical and imaginary spaces.

Being isolated in time of a global crisis made Emmy think about the loneliness and solitude many of us experience now. Although a lot of her work comes from an introspective process, for this project she wants to unite people through painting together, online. Her own mark is not to be seen in this painting, and anyone can work on it. What does it mean for an artist not to be part of their own work?