Under the title 'Don’t do that any more', two years after his last solo
presentation, Rik Meijers (1963, Rotterdam) is given the opportunity to
present an overview of his artistic oeuvre in Museum Het Domein in Sitttard,
the Netherlands. Alongside the mystical portraits that are a recurrent feature
in his work, Meijers will be presenting recent paintings and work never
previously on public display, such as painted bottles and Polaroids. Here, the
artist is not only referring to low culture and unpretentious,
salt-of-the-earth folk art, but to logos, secularized or not, and Art Brut.
Fabulous figures still populate the world of Rik Meijers, who lives and works
in Sittard. It is a domain where martyrs, prophets, mystics and gurus rub
shoulder with pin-ups, vagrants, hippies and members of his family. The
projection of their images on top of and over each other is the basis of the
canvases onto which strata of paint are literally layered, along with less
traditional materials like pitch and feathers, bottletops, shards of glass and
beads. These collective personalities are shown in close up and embody alien
(de)formations, and the capricious, illogical impact that reality exercises on
the individual. This, however, the artist accomplishes without adopting a
determinist position: the works are impossible to place in a background or
context and elude judgement. For Meijers, representing and animating his
protagonists is what it’s all about. With this, the artist does not liberate
his figures from the margins of society to place them at its centre, but
transports the viewer to ‘the edge’ where he or she is suddenly catapulted
into the role of freak, to be feasted upon by myriads of eyes. Meijers
literally gives the images 'body' by his use of materials, in particular
fashioning faces that have escaped the margin and surface through the layers
to loom suddenly before the viewer. His paintings are almost exorcisms that
evoke images that we intuit, but cannot know.
A catalogue/artist’s book with an introduction by Dominic van den Boogerd
accompanies the exhibition. The book is inspired by fanzines that emanate the
same mood as Meijers’ idiosyncratic choice of themes and material
Rik Meijers trained at the Academie Beeldende Kunsten (Visual Arts Academy) in
Maastricht and Jan van Eyck Academy in Maastricht. Works by Rik Meijers are
included in the collections of Fries Museum Leeuwarden, Bonnefantenmuseum
Maastricht, Museum voor Moderne Kunst Arnhem, Stadsgalerij Heerlen, Het Domein
Sittard, ABN-AMRO Amsterdam, Océ Venlo, De Nederlandsche Bank Amsterdam and
DSM Art Collection. In 1996 he won the Koninklijke Subsidie for free painting
and in 2000 the Wolvecampprijs.
