Artist Michael Raedecker (b. 1963 in Amsterdam, NL, lives and works in London, UK) will present a survey of over thirty years of work in a major retrospective at the Kunstmuseum Den Haag in the Hague (NL) from April 13 – August 11, 2024.
Raedecker’s work seeks to make sense of the symbiotic and often parasitic relationship between nature and humanity – to understand our place in the world and draw attention to the proximity and power of nature in relation to the urban environment. His distinctive practice blends painting with richly textural embroidery, conjuring scenes that hold the urban in an uneasy balance with nature which creeps and sprawls across the canvas, over open car doors, solitary sun loungers, and vacant pools. In both its content and form, Raedecker’s work engages with the act of deconstruction and reconfiguration, resisting the perceived distinctions between ‘fine art’ and craft, and drawing attention to competing surface qualities and the illusion of representation as he subverts the painted canvas with textured details.
Over the course of his career, Raedecker has consistently explored the impact of a changing world on the meaning and context of his work, interrogating not only the subject matter but the medium through which it is communicated. Traversing the handmade and the mechanical, Raedecker collapses the original into the copy and back into to the original. The resulting work captures a prevailing sensation of the uncanny – capturing the presence of humanity through our visual absence in relation to the environment. Recurring motifs such as swimming pools and empty cabins suggest an absent figure – highlighting the strangeness of the suburban terrain sitting at the junction where the landscape meets man-made dwellings. A placid, dark palette is set in violent contrast with vivid blues, greens, and pinks, capturing Raedecker’s haunting observations on our own ephemerality.
Ahead of his retrospective, Raedecker commented: “Throughout the thirty years of my practice I have made works that deal with this confrontation, alliance, symbiosis of us versus nature - our place in this world…The selection for the exhibition in the Kunstmuseum Den Haag will all be paintings that deal with the presence, but visual absence of, us in relation to our environment; indoors and outdoors. The landscape, the suburban setting where the landscape meets man-made dwellings. Where we live, the exterior with the interior, and the variety of items we gather to make our living environment personal and homely. Observing, translating, and finding an awareness of ‘where’ we exist.”
