VOYAGE
September 7 - October 31
opening of the exhibition on Friday the 6th of September from 17:30-19:30.

Travel has been a thankful subject for many photographers since the invention of the medium more than 150 years ago. In the exhibition Voyage, with which Kahmann Gallery will open the new gallery season, five photographers who have their own unique and contemporary interpretation of the concept of travel are brought together: Lonneke van der Palen (NL, 1985), Katrien Vermeire (BE, 1979), Annick Ligtermoet (NL, 1983), Helena van den Enden (NL, 1964) and Takeshi Shikama (JP, 1948).

Taking a trip doesn’t necessarily mean you have to leave the comforts of your own home, at least for Lonneke van der Palen. An inexperienced traveller who wanted to broaden her horizon, but without the means to visit all the countries she wanted, Van der Palen created her own journeys within the confines of her studio for the series Souvenir. Van der Palen explores the clichés of travel photography, recreating them with everyday objects, such as a sunset with a lightbulb and piece of tarp. Kahmann Gallery will show work from this series, as well as exciting new work by Van der Palen, in which she documented her travels through Morocco. In this new work, we see Van der Palen’s use of household objects again, but here she integrated them with the exotic landscape of Morocco. Van der Palen graduated in 2011 from the Royal Academy of Arts in The Hague, and in the short time since then has exhibited her work widely, such as at GEM The Hague, Fotomuseum The Hague and Nederlands Fotomuseum Rotterdam.

Unlike Van der Palen, Annick Ligtermoet is a well experienced traveller, with a love for the Nordic countries and Russia. These countries are places that have long, harsh winters and some of lowest population densities in the world. In her work, Ligtermoet shows u how untouched and raw the nature in these parts of the world are, but also how isolated and lonely the landscape feels. We see glimpses of human life in her work, like an abandonded cabin in the woods, but as a viewer you feel the isolation that inhabitants of these places feel on a daily basis. Ligtermoet’s work also has a fairytale like quality, calling to mind the sinister folklore of Scandinavia and the writings of Hans Christian Andersen. Ligtermoet graduated in 2008 from the Royal Academy of Arts in The Hague, and has exhibited in both group and solo exhibitions, nationally and internationally. 

Helena van den Enden travels a bit closer to home, venturing out into the Dutch dune landscape. She captured the dunes on times when most people aren’t around: in the moonlight, in the very early morning or on overcast days. It makes the landscape appear untouched and wild. Van den Enden plays with the transition between day and night, as well as the contrast between light and dark. She shows us how much this can change our perception of a landscape. What is nothing more than an average dune landscape in the daylight, can be transformed into the most magical of places, just by capturing it a different time of day. Van den Enden waits for hours (or even days) on end to make sure the light is perfect, before she takes her photograph.

In Katrien Vermeire’s series On Selecting Vibrations nature is also the main focus, but instead of venturing inland, Vermeire turns her camera to the sea. Vermeire travelled to different countries to photograph various oceans and seas, but always from the same perspective. In all of the images the horizon is on the same level. The effect of this images is highly mesmerizing, the blue of the sky blending with the blue of the water. The pictures become almost abstract, recalling the famous intoxicating colourscapes of Mark Rothko. Vermeire has exhibited her work widely, including at Foam Amsterdam, the Biennale of Sydney and Museum M Leuven.
 
A lifelong fascination with trees and forests is what drove Takeshi Shikama to photography. It is the invisible world behind the visible world of the forest that Shikama aims to capture. He began documenting his obsession in his homeland Japan, where more than 60% of the country is covered by woodlands, but soon ventured out to Europe and the United States to explore the invisible world in foreign forests. His black and white images bring the early days of photography to mind, when legends like Ansel Adams wondered the world with their images of untouched nature. Shikama works with handmade Japanese Gampi paper. The printing progress with this type of paper requires a great deal of time and manual labor, which reflects the intimacy Shikama has with his subject matter. Shikama’s work has been exhibited all over the world and has been included in many important collections, which include the Bibliotheque Nationale de France, The Museum of Fine Arts Houston and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

With Voyage, Kahmann Gallery will participate in the SEE.D project. Together with 9 other galleries in Amsterdam, Kahmann Gallery is part of the SEE.D art tour throughout the city. At every stop of the tour, a new art discovery can be made. For more information, go to www.seedtalent.nl.

Kahmann Gallery will be participating at Unseen Photo Fair Amsterdam from September 25 until September 29, and will show new work of Tiane Doan na Champassak, Schilte & Portielje, Barry Kornbluh, Katrien Vermeire and Lonneke van der Palen. For more information, go to www.unseenamsterdam.com.

You are invited to join the opening of the exhibition on Friday the 6th of September from 17:30-19:30.