Koen Taselaar

From 14 April 2027, Stedelijk Museum Schiedam will be presenting a major exhibition by the artist Koen Taselaar (1986). Featuring drawings, silk-screen prints, furniture, sculptures, and especially tapestries, this will be the very first time that his versatile work is shown to its full extend. One of the eyecatchers of this upcoming exhibition is the nineteen-metre-long tapestry End, And (2024), a work about the Apocalypse.

With its bright colours and rhythmic patterns that fill his compositions right up to the edges, Taselaar’s work is instantly recognizable. But underneath that playful surface a more poignant layer often lies hidden. The Opinionated Aquarium (2020), for instance, shows colourful fishes swimming in an aquarium to comment on how people consume news through their television screens without critically reflecting on it. And in Radical Furniture for Radical Times (2019) we see an octopus family living in a human home filled with iconic Italian Radical Design furniture. The work imagines a future where human beings exterminated themselves and have been replaced by octopuses. Taselaar’s tapestry End, And (2024) depicts dozens of scenarios on how the world might end. And yet he always manages to keep subjects like these light-hearted. With his soft fabrics, cheerful shapes, and sense of humour, Taselaar creates images that invite people to look at the works for longer. After all, what lies hidden beneath the surface will only gradually reveal itself.

Mythological figures and a contemporary visual language
During the production process of his tapestries, Taselaar combines the old with the new, making both analogous drawings and digitally designed patterns. He subsequently has these designs machine-woven in a Jacquard technique that dates back many centuries and involves the patterns being woven directly into the fabric. The combination of old and new is also visible in the images themselves. Early medieval and mythological figures as well as references to artworks by masters like Brancusi share the tapestry with the Chesshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland, iPhones, and an Iron Maiden album cover. Taselaar is thus using an ancient vehicle to combine images for telling contemporary stories.

Curated by Ellis Kat, the exhibition includes a small selection of earlier work, but will mainly feature recent and new work, including a number of pieces that were realized especially for this occasion.

Stedelijk Museum Schiedam has been closely following the artist Koen Taselaar for a longer period of time. His work was shown in the exhibitions Van Oerbeest tot rokende croissant (2022) and Liefde voor tekenen (2024), which he co-curated. Furthermore, various works by Taselaar are part of the museum’s collection, including a tapestry and a number of drawings.