Artist: Paul Beumer
Exhibition title: In the Shade of the Elms and Willows, My Friends Drink Until They Are Inspired
Curated by: Ada Kai-Ting Yang
Venue: Palais Schardt Goethe Pavillon, Weimar, Germany
Date: May 6 – June 3, 2016
Photography: Svante Kerstingjohänner, all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Dürst Britt & Mayhew
For his presentation in the Goethe Pavillon of the Palais Schardt in Weimar Paul Beumer chose to exhibit a floor-piece consisting of various painted textiles, ranging from useless cloth to a lavishly embroidered kimono, all held together by stones found in the palace’s garden. The work shifts between the Bauhaus aesthetics of Anni Albers’ pattern designs and the bourgeois aesthetics of lavish Rococo decorations. Hierarchy of materials is discarded, which leaves ample space for ambiguity and contradiction. The installation does not fix itself to only one reading or meaning. On close inspection notions of process, natural philosophy and Romanticism come to the fore.
Paul Beumer (1982) received his BFA from the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague and in 2014 completed a two-year residency at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam. In 2015 he was a resident artist at the Chinese European Art Center (CEAC) in Xiamen, China. Recent solo exhibitions include Dry Landscape at CEAC in Xiamen, China, I won’t have the luxury of seeing scenes like this much longer at Dürst Britt & Mayhew in The Hague and Tomorrow’s Harvest at Bosse & Baum in London. He participated in various group exhibitions, including The Dutch Identity? Half Sugar, Half Sand at Museum De Paviljoens in Almere, Netherlands (2012) and Now or Never at the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague (2010). Work by Beumer is held in various private and public collections including the AKZO Nobel Art Foundation, Amsterdam; the collection of the District Court of Law, Amsterdam; and the KRC Collection, Voorschoten.
