SHOE – UNMOVEMENT

Curated by Gabriel Rolt for The Curators Room

SHOE
ZERO KELVIN (MINUS 273 DEGREES CELSIUS)
Spray paint and acrylic on linen
195 x 150 cm
2023

SHOE
ALL DISORDER DISAPPEARS
Spray paint and acrylic on linen
195 x 150 cm
2023

SHOE
NOTHING CAN BE COLDER
Spray paint and acrylic on linen
195 x 150 cm
2023

SHOE
ON AND UNDER THE VULCANO
Spray paint and acrylic on linen
195 x 150 cm
2023

SHOE
PARTY ALL THE TIME
Spray paint and acrylic on linen
200 x 155 cm
2023

SHOE
PERMANENTLY CLOSED
Spray paint and acrylic on linen
200 x 155 cm
2023

SHOE /// 2023

The Curators Room is proud to announce UNMOVEMENT, a solo exhibition by SHOE featuring his most recent body of work.


As explained by the artist, the title Unmovement is inspired by the ever-present dichotomy of movement and stillness. While the painted surface of a work is a still object, the particles of the paint are constantly moving, as well as the material quality of the canvas itself: time consumes, and transforms. The crystallization of an impression is, however, present in the here and now, prompting a question concerning the nature of time and, inevitably, of change.

Unmovement is, therefore, arrested motion: the extract of something that is expanding, but is still in the present moment. This paradox is what lies at the core of the show, but also of Shoe’s entire artistic practice, which, if described, could be defined as a research into everything and the contrary of everything.

Interesting aspect to the works featured here –and to the active working process– is their inherent decadence. By driving over expensive spray cans with a car or by casually burning freshly made canvases, Shoe reenacts the arrogance of capitalism, in a neoliberal world where sourcing painting tools is a luxury to many. This nonchalant attitude is an ironic take to the current socio economical climate, as well as a hint to the contemporary status of the art world, often seen as increasingly elitarian.

In Shoe’s works, the car (a 1992 Buick Park Avenue) is used as a brush, it’s a utensil, whose traces create a pattern, a sign that is here, however, not merely an index: the car is central to the exhibition, presented in its glory as evident source and testimony of the pictorial signs.

A video of the creation of the canvases, by long-time collaborator Sander Lanen, is also featured in the show: the engine of the car rumbles, the spray cans are aggressively torn apart and spill color on the white surfaces, that are cut and purge like open wounds. The performative aspect central to this specific working method is reminiscent of a long line of action painters from the twentieth century, in movements like the Art Autre or the so called Informal Art.

From the Catalan Tàpies, who implemented different ‘poor’ materials in his work, to Pollock, who introduced a different kind of brushing through his leaking technique, up to the interactive approach of the Japanese Gutai group, the site specificity of Shoe’s action painting explores not only the pictorial residues left on the canvases, but also the spatial aspect of the making process. Even the burning of the canvases, reminiscent of the ‘Combustioni’ by Alberto Burri, among others, testifies of Shoe’s attempt to take bits of art historical practices in order to then transpose them into the contemporary.

The strokes created by the car wheels can also be seen as a further development in Shoes’s own practice. Internationally known for his graffiti art, Shoe started to experiment with calligraphy and created his Calligraffiti; an experimentation concerning the nature and the aesthetics of the written language. Now, the artist reached what he semi-ironically calls Carrigraffiti: signs, interventions, actual paintings created by using his car as a tool.

If everything is the contrary of everything we find ourselves here, in the midst of a still movement, a temporal interval in the constant transformation of matter, absorbing Shoe’s work as precisely what it is: the paradox of our time.

–Sara van Bussel, Milano, March 2023

(in cooperation with Niels Shoe Meulman, Amsterdam and Gabriel Rolt, Barcelona)

Bio

Niels Shoe Meulman is a visual artist, known for his gestural paintings which reveal vivid traces of graffiti and calligraphy. He revolutionized the art of writing when he initiated the Calligraffiti movement, claiming “a word is an image and writing is painting”.

Being a graffiti pioneer from Amsterdam, Shoe tagged along with New York counterparts such as Dondi White, Rammellzee and Keith Haring in the 1980s. Equally influenced by the great painters of Abstract Expressionism, he gradually found his own way to translate street attitude to gallery walls.

Experimenting within the traditional medium of paint-on-canvas, but also unafraid to venture into new realms like conceptual installations and poetry, Niels Shoe Meulman keeps pushing the limits of Urban Contemporary.

Shoe’s recent and upcoming public and gallery exhibitions include Unmovement, The Curators Room Amsterdam; Beyond the Streets London, Saatchi gallery, London ; Shoe bij Six, Jan Six, Amsterdam; What the fuck?, Straat Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands; Unstallation, Ghost Galerie, Marseille, France; Unidenticals and Reverse Paintings, Galerie Droste; Beyond the Streets, The Saatchi Gallery, London, United Kingdom; Capitale(s), 60 years of urban art in Paris, Hotel de Ville, Paris, France and Post>andalism: Unruly Gallery tenth anniversary show, Het HEM, Zaandam, Netherlands.

His work can be found in the permanent collections including Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam ; SFMoMa, San Francisco; Museum of Graffiti, Miami and Jan Six, Amsterdam.