In the summer of 2006 a group of artists from Den Haag in The Netherlands started a project they called mękh. They did so by putting a work of each of them in one exhibition space during a public happening to see if this would go together in a way that would be beneficial to each of the art-works. Reactions of the public were enthusiastic and the four artists felt this presentation contained sufficient arguments to continue the project seriously.
The artists are:
Hans Ensink op Kemna (painting and installations)
Maarten Schepers (sculpture and site-specific installations)
Ellen rodenberg (painting, installations)
Kees Koomen (painting, installations and video)
After the summer of 2006 we decided to rent a project studio in DCR, a cultural centre in Den Haag and started to come together regularly to talk about exhibiting together, the nature of exhibiting in specific surroundings, the nature of each others work and the influence it has on each of the others work. We also made art works about the subjects at hand and tried to make a presentation of all our activities. Al this happened while all of us were working in our own studio on individual exhibitions or other projects.
In february 2007 we felt so inspired that we held a first presentation of our work in the project studio with the intention to interest institutions in presenting our project. We had galleries, private collectors, artists initiatives and government-institutions visiting our space and reactions led to a number of offers for exhibitions in very different surroundings. So in spring 2007 two large projects were executed and in the fall of 2007 one more was presented.
The first exhibition we participated in may 2007was in a large cellar beneath the temporal space of the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. The institute that organised this was W139, a renowned semi-governmental institute. Then, also in may 2007, we presented ourselves in an exhibition in “Ateliers als Supermedium”, an artists initiative in the outskirts of Den Haag. This was very interesting to us because or the space which consisted of eight museum-like rooms in which we were able to test our ideas to the maximum. We then decided to drop the name mękh to open up the project to other artists and in the fall the four of us were able to make an installation in CBK, a semi-governmental institute in Apeldoorn. This resulted in an exhibition that surpassed our expectations and with the name (EX)-MĘKH we went on. An exhibition curated by Hans Ensink op Kemna in Pulchri-Studio in Den Haag took place in early spring 2008. Op "Uitnodiging II" consisted of a site-specific installation: (EX)-MĘKH and four invited artists wall-papered the space. Each of them made works on two rolls of drawing paper, eventually seven rolls were attached to the walls.
In late Spring 2008 we started on some individual projects: Maarten Schepers and Ellen Rodenberg stayed in Residence in Cemeti Art-House in Yogjakarta en Kees Koomen started research with the grant he received for combining video and painting in installations. Hans Ensink op Kemna continued working on his works on paper. In the 2008 a number of individual presentations took place after which we felt the urge to do something together again. So now we are working towards a show in De nederlandse Cacaofabriek in Helmond in the South-East of The netherlands and a show is planned in Den Haag in September 2009.
http://www.hansensinkopkemna.com/
http://www.haagsekunstenaars.nl/zoeken.php?voornaam=maarten&achternaam=schepers&gebjaar=&omschrwrk
Project sites: