This time in Amsterdam I finally found time to visit Galerie Fons Welters in the Jordaan area of the city. Fons Welters is a gallery famous for discovering new local and international artists. It was open at the end of the ‘80s in a former garage space and is now representing emerging and mid-career artists for thirty years. Most of the artists that are currently represented by Galerie Fons Welters started their careers with this same gallery.
After walking through widely known and full of history streets of Amsterdam, I arrived to the Jordaan neighbourhood famous for its many art galleries. One of the greatest artists in history – Rembrandt – spent the last years of his life here long before this area became one of the most exclusive locations in Amsterdam.
Galerie Fons Welters is located at number 140 of Bloemstraat. The green entrance door designed by Joep van Lieshout is impossible to miss thanks to the design that is so reminiscent of retro-futuristic movies of the seventies and looks like a real alien between the surrounding architecture.
The main exhibition that is currently on view at Galerie Fons welters is a solo show by American artist Matthew Monahan. For his fifth exhibition at this gallery, he introduced seven steel foil sculptures named “Boys Don´t Cry”. These male faces might look a lot like crumpled paper balls by a quick glance, however they are all men faces representing emotions or cliche types of manly figures, all meticulously painted in oil. The individual titles of sculptures range from “Kontrole Freak A.U.B.” to “Midlife of the Crow” or “D.H. at the Stoney Lonesome” between others.
The accessible height of the sculpture bases allowed me to observe them from all sides which I always enjoy. Especially when the technique is not very common as an oil painting on stainless steel foil is. The matte finishing and brown color palette give the feeling of cardboard paper which was possibly Matthew Monahan’s intention from the start.
The front part of the gallery has more art on view. This later adjusted part of the exhibition space is called the “Playstation” and is dedicated to the work of new emerging artists. On this occasion, I had a chance to view enigmatic and playful paintings by a German artist Sarah Ksieska together with paintings and drawings by a young Sweedish artist Josefina Anjou who explores the “in-between” subjects of the world.
I was very happy to have a chance and visit Galerie Fons Welters and will absolutely add it to my “must visit” list when visiting Amsterdam in the future.
For more information visit the official website for the gallery.
