Alex van Warmerdam - Series

Dutch artist, filmmaker, actor, and writer Alex van Warmerdam has a diverse practice; working across multiple mediums he has established a distinctive voice as one of the Netherland’s most renowned filmmakers. Van Warmerdam explores the absurdity, humor, and horror of social conventions and personality types, proposing that devolvement into the surreal is an ever-present possibility.

The artist has long worked between mediums preserving an attitude of creative freedom, and drawing on different approaches to mutually inform and shape his works. Often his paintings are constructed like dream sequences, preparing the viewer for the ensuing moments of an unfolding narrative. The practice of embedding themes from Dutch intellectual and cultural history is manifest in Van Warmerdam’s series Tronies. This body of work references the Dutch Golden Age genre, depicting anonymous individuals, accentuating their features to relay aspects of their personality, state of mind, and character. His latest paintings, part of the series Verschijningen (Apparitions), are based on a multitude of images, photographs and clippings that Van Warmerdam has collected throughout the years and which he subsequently combines. Personages, or characters are found in books or on the internet. Interiors and landscapes found in old magazines, or in his own photographic archive Van Warmerdam’s rich texture and the unexpected color combinations create captivating images that intrigue the viewer with their powerful presence and offer alternative ways of perceiving the ordinary.

Alex van Warmerdam (b. 1952 in Haarlem, NL) studied painting and printing at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam (NL). After graduating in 1974 he started his first theater company that later became the famed ‘Orkater' and subsequently ‘De Mexicaanse Hond’. Van Warmerdam has won many awards for his work in literature, theater and film, including the Palme d’Or nomination for his film Borgman. In 2010 his multidisciplinary work was the subject of a solo exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum, Schiedam (NL) and in 2018 the EYE Filmmuseum, Amsterdam (NL) presented his retrospective exhibition titled l’Histoire Kaputt. Van Warmerdam was awarded the Prins Bernhard Cultuur Prize for Theatre as well as the Johannes Vermeer Prize for his entire oeuvre. In September 2021, the artist released his tenth movie, titled Nr. 10.