Dream space
"A good painting can be inside you," Siet Zuyderland (1942) once said. He saw the painting as a meeting place between the viewer and the painter's order, as he told his friend and writer Bernlef (1937-2012). Read More
This is Zuyderland’s second exhibition at this location. His first exhibition took place in 1962 in the villa of the cultural estate, which housed the Bergen Artists’ Centre (KCB) at the time.
Bergen
Zuyderland has strong ties to Bergen. He lives in Amsterdam and spent weekends and school holidays there in the 1960s and 1970s. During this time, he also worked in a studio on Natteweg in Bergen. Composer Simeon ten Holt was among his friends. In the following years, he exhibited several times at the KCB. In 2012, Zuyderland spent three months working in a studio in Bergen.
Spaces
Zuyderland made a name for himself with paintings of prisons and metro stations. He traveled the world for the latter subject. He continued to innovate, and the realistic depictions became dreamlike images. Bernlef wrote about this: “Zuyderland’s paintings—initially realistic, later abstract (but does that difference matter?)—depict spaces, at first stark and disturbing, later more open, more fluid. The contours capture something (…), but at the same time he tries to keep them moving, alive, both within and beyond time.”
