BUNNIK.- A solo exhibition of Hannah Van Bart's atmospheric portraits, still lifes, and landscapes—organized by the Centraal Museum—opened at the Landhuis Oud Amelisweerd, a historic country estate in Utrecht, the Netherlands, this past spring. The exhibition is accompanied by a new publication featuring essays by Allie Biswas, Hans den Hartog Jager, and Bart Rutten.

Van Bart paints portraits, still lifes and landscapes in a drawing-like handwriting and with subdued use of colour. Penetrating, atmospheric works in which beauty and discomfort go hand in hand.

Although she works figuratively, Van Bart rarely starts from an existing image. Usually the starting point is a type of light, a shine, a mud trail, a reflection. She then tries to reproduce that sensation while searching. What does this feeling look like? What is perception and what is reality? She herself describes her working method as a walk, a journey where the horizon beckons but the concrete destination is still unknown.

The surface of the paintings shows that searching painting process: if you look closely, you discover many layers of paint. Details of a face, a body, a landscape are put on and then wiped away again - sometimes literally - sanded away. All those layers are a bit like memories. Some vague, others very direct and sharp. This contributes to the psychological depth of the work. And although Van Bart never bases her characters on real people, there is something recognizable about them – as if they stem from a collective memory.

This exhibition includes works from the past twenty years that - except for one painting - can be seen for the first time in the Netherlands. Together, the works show how Van Bart keeps returning to certain motifs.

This programming is a partner project of the Hartwig Art Foundation.

Amsterdam-based artist Hannah van Bart (b. 1963; Oud-Zuilen, Maarssen, the Netherlands) cites the Dutch Golden Age as the inspiration for her portraits, still lifes, and landscapes. Throughout her practice, van Bart brings together figures, interiors, and exteriors in inventive ways—as if to suggest there are no distinctions between the subjects. Figures or anthropomorphized objects appear and reappear in van Bart’s paintings and drawings, and her style is marked by distinctive outlines, repeated patterning, and layered brushwork in matte palettes.

Van Bart's work is the subject of a 2023 solo exhibition at the Landhuis Oud Amelisweerd, Centraal Museum, Utrecht, the Netherlands. She has had additional solo exhibitions at the Kunstmuseum Den Haag, The Hague, the Netherlands; the Cobra Museum of Modern Art, Amstelveen, the Netherlands; Vielmetter, Los Angeles, CA; and Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York, NY. van Bart has also shown in numerous group exhibitions, including at Chazen Museum of Art, Madison, WI; the Rubell Family Collection, Miami, FL; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, the Netherlands; the 11th Lyon Biennale, Lyon, France; Het Noordbrabants Museum, Hertogenbosch, the Netherlands; and Singer Laren, Van Cobra tot Dumas, Laren, the Netherlands. Her work is found in the permanent collections of the Centraal Museum, Utrecht, the Netherlands; the Chazen Museum of Art, Madison, WI; Kunstmuseum Den Haag, The Hague, the Netherlands; the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH; Rhode Island School of Design Museum, Providence, RI; and the Teylers Museum, Haarlem, the Netherlands. She was the recipient of the Royal Award for Fine Art Painting in 1994 and the Philip Morris Kunstprijs in 1998. In 2019, she was awarded the Jeanne Oosting Prize for Painting. As part of the award, van Bart’s work was presented at De Vishal, Haarlem, the Netherlands. van Bart studied at Gerrit Rietveld Academie and Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten, both in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. She lives and works in Amsterdam.

Landhuis Oud Amelisweerd
HANNAH FROM BART • SOLO
April 1st, 2023 - August 20th, 2023