Submarine Wharf - XXXL Painting

This summer Klaas Kloosterboer, Chris Martin and Jim Shaw will transform the Submarine Wharf into a gigantic art studio. This is the fourth consecutive summer that Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, in collaboration with Port of Rotterdam, is organising an exhibition of contemporary art in Rotterdam’s docklands. 'Submarine Wharf - XXXL Painting' is on view from 8 June until 29 September.

In the months leading up to the opening, the artists will be busy at work in the wharf, creating the exhibition on site. Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen wishes to demonstrate the resilience and energy of the art of painting with a true ‘battle of the Titans’ between the three artists.

Bomber, savage painter and storyteller

The Amsterdam-based artist Klaas Kloosterboer can be seen as the ‘bomber’. He experiments constantly, altering the form and appearance of his paintings. The exhibition will include works from the collection of Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, augmented with loans and new works. Chris Martin lives and works in New York and is the ‘savage painter’: he uses his energy to make each painting an explosion of colour and power. In ‘XXXL Painting’ he will exhibit thirty existing paintings, and in the weeks leading up to the opening he will work on a new painting measuring 13 x 10 metres. Jim Shaw, the ‘storyteller’ from Los Angeles completes the trio. He paints and draws in a figurative, sometimes cartoon-like style on old film sets. In the Submarine Wharf he will present these ‘backdrop’ paintings, some measuring 4 x 15 metres.

Jim Shaw: storyteller

Jim Shaw was born in 1952, in Midland (Michigan). He gained his BA at the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor) in 1974 and his MA in 1978 at the California Institute of Arts (CalArts). He has lived and worked in Los Angeles since then. Shaw was a member of the American proto-punk band Destroy all Monsters (together with artist Mike Kelley, singer Niagara and filmmaker Cary Loren). Since the beginning of his career Shaw has painted and drawn in a figurative, sometimes cartoon-like style. Pop art and Surrealism are two important influences on his work. Pop art not only because one of his themes is American consumer society, but also because he literally uses images from popular culture. For example, he has made an entire series on the covers of paperbacks, and old film sets are the canvases of his ‘backdrop’ paintings. Several of these works are shown in the Submarine Wharf. Jim Shaw has been selected by curator Massimiliano Gioni to exhibit at the 55th Venice Biennale, where works by more than 150 artists from 37 are on display. The Venice Biennale opens on 1 June 2013. Jim Shaw has previously exhibited four times in the Netherlands, including in the show ‘I Rip You, You Rip Me (Honey We’re Going Down in History)’ at Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in 1998.

Chris Martin: savage painter

Chris Martin (Washington, 1954) is almost the same age as Jim Shaw and paints and thinks on the same monumental scale. Martin lives and works on the other side of the United States, on the East Coast, in Brooklyn NY. He has a two-storey studio completely packed with small and large paintings made since around 1980, when he made his first steps in the art world. It is only in the past few years that he has achieved international success with his work. Due to several personal experiences, he came to the conclusion that every painting was an important moment, whether successful or not, and should be kept. That afforded him both a great sense of peace and energy: the peace of mind to make bad paintings if necessary and the energy to make each painting an explosion of colour and power. Chris Martin is inspired by outsider art, artists with an African background, and art by colleagues that he knows personally or from books. With them in the back of his mind, he has created a fiery and intense body of work. Despite their monumental scale, his paintings contain numerous details and experiments with form and figuration. The works are full of quotations and references to other painters. He often uses ordinary sailcloth and enormous quantities of paint. He paints quickly with large brushes, mostly with the canvas on the floor.

Click here to read an interview with Chris Martin in The Brooklyn Rail. Watch a video of the installation of Chris Martin’s exhibition at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, and an interview with the artist about his exhibition.

Klaas Kloosterboer: bomber

The Amsterdam-based painter Klaas Kloosterboer (1959) is not a storyteller like Jim Shaw or a savage painter like Chris Martin, but someone who poses fundamental questions about the art of painting in each and every painting he makes. He is an explorer. He tries things out and therefore sometimes puts himself and his canvases on trial. He is also an inventor, innovative in his painterly techniques and in his use (and sometimes misuse) of materials. Klaas Kloosterboer experiments continually, so that the form and appearance of his works constantly changes. Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen has diverse works by Kloosterboer in the collection, which can be seen in the Collection Online. In the Submarine Wharf, works from the collection are combined with loans and new works made in situ.

Submarine Wharf

For five consecutive summers a leading contemporary artist is invited to create a special installation in the Submarine Wharf. The building, constructed in 1937, is similar in size to the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern in London. The first three exhibitions in the series were devoted to Atelier van Lieshout in 2010, Elmgreen & Dragset in 2011 en Sarkis in 2012. Watch the video's on ARTtube.

The Submarine Wharf is one of the Port of Rotterdam’s initiatives to bring a broader public in contact with the harbour and to improve the quality of the docklands. The Submarine Wharf is part of the RDM Campus at Heijplaat. This early-twentieth-century industrial heritage site is currently being redeveloped for education, culture and innovative businesses. Please find more information on RDM Campus here. Take a fifteen-minute trip down the River Maas on the Aqualiner. Please find more information about Aqualiner here (Dutch only).

Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen would like to thank BankGiro Loterij and the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary ART for their generous support and collaboration.