THE HAGUE.- Jan Rosseel's exhibition Back-up at Stroom Den Haag is the final instalment of a triptych that started with a presentation almost a year ago at Amsterdam's De Brakke Grond and continued at Museum Dr. Guislain (Ghent, Belgium). The Stroom exhibition reflects a new maturity and deepening of the artist's themes, as well as adding a large number of new works. The presentation focuses on the relationship between history, politics and power.

What do we personally remember of collective events? What makes an image iconic? Can we even forget historical events in our own times - with so many images being produced of everything that happens? And in which ways are our personal and collective memories stored for the future? Over the past five years, these questions served as a point of departure for the artistic research of photographer and ‘visual storyteller' Jan Rosseel. This research intensified further during a fellowship at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in Humanities and Social Sciences (NIAS) in 2015. Rosseel was the very first artist to be awarded this honor.

Insights gained in this period form the foundation for Rosseel's project Back-up, which takes the shape of three consecutive exhibitions. The third part of the triptych at Stroom Den Haag focuses on a new theme: the trial of Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu in 1989. This subject connects to the very foundations of Rosseel's research: the merging of personal recollections, the shaping of our collective memory and history by the media and the role played by public perception and images in these processes.

Jan Rosseel (Brussels/The Hague, 1979) studied documentary photography at the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague and photojournalism at the Danish School of Media and Journalism in Aarhus. Rosseel's work is best described as ‘visual storytelling'. It lies somewhere between a fictional narrative and a record of reality - between art and journalism. His projects both reconstruct historical events in artistic terms and question the reliability of our memories and mental processes. A striking and well-known example is his visual study Belgian Autumn, which centers on the violent robberies perpetrated by the Gang of Nivelles. Rosseel's photos have been published in variety of magazines and newspapers, including The New York Times, Le Monde, De Volkskrant / Volkskrant Magazine, Vrij Nederland, De Standaard / DS Magazine, De Morgen, Stern and Foam Magazine. His work has been presented in venues at, among other places, Amsterdam, Antwerp, New York, Paris, Rome and Tokyo.

Jan Rosseel: Back-up is a co-production of: De Brakke Grond, Museum Dr. Guislain and Stroom Den Haag.