This summer, the Projectenzaal will be available to Dutch artist Toon Verhoef. He will use the space for an installation of nine monumental, recent paintings. The Projectenzaal is a space that the Gemeentemuseum makes available to an artist without the organizing hand of the curator. In this case, Toon Verhoef chooses to exhibit the canvases he has selected in a non-classical, non-museum-like manner. He will not give them the space they usually need because of their size and visual effect. As an experiment, Verhoef will place the nine canvases, which have an identical size (2.50 by 1.90 m), so close together that they will interact with each other, in Berlage's compelling architecture.
In addition to the monumental format of Verhoef's canvases, the layering, physical construction and transparency are characteristic aspects in his oeuvre. Forms, colors, signs, lines, structures and textures lie on top of each other like translucent collages, offering a complex window that forces the viewer to really look. On the one hand, Verhoef wants the canvas to show what it is: any hint of figuration or narrative elements is missing. On the other hand, he makes sure that the canvas reveals itself to the viewer only very slowly. This makes his work impossible to fathom at a glance.
