Michael Raedecker, tipping point, 2007, acrylic and thread on canvas, 198 x 336 cm, three parts; each 198 x 112 cm, Tate.

Michael Raedecker, nameless, 2007, acrylic and thread on canvas, 285 x 240 cm, two parts; each 285 x 120 cm, private collection, The Netherlands.

Michael Raedecker, substance, 2008, acrylic and thread on canvas, 144 x 118 cm, courtesy the artist and Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York.

GEM Museum
of Contemporary Art
Stadhouderslaan 41
31-(0)70-3381111
Den Haag
Michael Raedecker. line-up
July 11, 2009-November 1, 2009

Michael Raedecker’s international career has taken off in a spectacular fashion in the past decade. He is considered one of the most successful artists of his generation, but little of his work has to date been seen in the Netherlands, the country of his birth. The Gemeentemuseum (of which GEM forms a part) was recently one of the first museums in the Netherlands to acquire one of Raedeckers’s large-scale works: reflex (2003).

Michael Raedecker (Amsterdam, 1963) first studied fashion design at the Rietveld Academy. Realising very quickly that his interest lay in painting, he decided to make a change of course after graduating. In 1993 he was admitted to the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten. In the mid-nineties he moved to London, where he gained an MA in Fine Art at the prestigious Goldsmiths College of Art. Since then he has lived and worked in London.

His still lifes with flowers, portraits and landscapes created in a combination of paint and thread rapidly conquered the London art world. Three events marked his big international breakthrough: the well-known collector Charles Saatchi began to buy his work, in 1999 he won the John Moore’s Prize (one of the most important prize for painting in the UK), and in 2000 he was short-listed for the Turner Prize.

Because he settled and experienced his first great success in London, he is well represented in foreign collections but features only rarely in public collections in the Netherlands. The Gemeentemuseum is therefore delighted to have acquired his work reflex, now on show in the XXth Century exhibition. The large exhibition features mainly recent works by Raedecker, the Netherlands’ most successful artist of the moment.

The exhibition is organised in partnership with Camden Art Centre in London and Carré d’Art, Musée d’art contemporain, in Nîmes. It opens first in London, and then travels to The Hague, where it will be supplemented with a number of works from private collections. The exhibition is accompanied by a richly illustrated catalogue in Dutch.

Michael Raedecker, penetration, 2005, acrylverf en garen op doek, 98 x 62 cm, Collectie Ann & Steven Ames, New York.

Michael Raedecker, paranoia, 2005, acrylic and thread on canvas, 197 x 285 cm, courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth Zürich London.

Camden Arts Centre
Arkwright Road
London
+44 (0)20 7472 5500
Michael Raedecker
Line-up
May 1-June 28, 2009

A solo exhibition by London-based artist Michael Raedecker includes new paintings and a selection from the last 5 years. He uses a unique combination of thread and paint to create his atmospheric paintings.

They derive from and also reinvent different genres from the history of art including still lifes, landscapes, ruins and flower paintings.

Before starting each painting, Raedecker questions its legitimacy today. Why this motif? What is the current relevance of the genre? The diversity of the images in the paintings shows his fascination with the possibilities and limitations of the medium. He treats their heritage with both nostalgia and suspicion.

In the new work, Raedecker references flowers, washing, cakes, table-cloths, sheets, lace, food and houses. These domestic topics and the decorative associations of needlework create a friction with the fetishistic nature of these paintings.

He sources images from second hand books, magazines, old catalogues, paintings, film stills and photographs. Using details from these images he makes his own original drawings, transfers them onto canvas and builds up the paintings with paint and different types of thread and wool.

Raedecker infuses his paintings with an eerie familiarity, and the sombre palette of subdued greys, blues and browns reinforces the darker and more surreal qualities.

Born and brought up in The Netherlands, Raedecker initially studied and worked as a fashion designer before becoming a painter. At art school he developed his unique style of producing paintings, intertwining his early love of textiles with his new preoccupation with paint.