Archive

With
Solo exhibition
Stigter van Doesburg galerie, Amsterdam NL 2017

Where before Aukje Koks explored the physical limits of the medium, and played with visual illusions, for this specific exhibition she focuses on the dreamlike thought world, grabbing back to her earlier works in tempera.
In Aukje Koks' paintings and drawings, everyday things - taken from intimate surroundings - float in a space seemingly parallel to reality. Introversion is here interspersed with togetherness. As if looking through a window or screen, some of the paintings in With represent an idea that there is a certain distance present in the works, in which transparency is a reoccurring subject.
Cut out parts of paintings appear outside of the canvas or are glued on to the painting as external elements of the same kind. Drawings are scattered through the exhibition as notes, as an extra research about the ability to grasp a certain idea or thought, before it flies away.

During The Exhibition, The Studio Will Be Close
WIELS Contemporary Art Centre, Brussels BE 2014
Group exhibition with Melissa Gordon, Lina Viste Grønli, Rob Johannesma, Aukje Koks, G. Küng, Cathérine Lommée, Emmanuelle Quertain, Grace Schwindt. Curated by Lorenzo Benedetti

During the Exhibition, the Studio Will Be Close is the second episode of a recurrent commitment made by WIELS that relates the artists formerly involved in the residency programme to its exhibition programme. The proximity of the studios to the exhibition spaces prompts increased attention to the following questions: what is the exhibition space, and what is there behind a show? The studio, research but, above all, time.

When the public visits the exhibitions at WIELS, there are, in the same building, artists who are at that moment creating, researching and elaborating new projects. The exhibition space becomes the studio’s alter ego, or, conversely, finds itself in a situation of proximity that is not purely symbolic. The importance of the relation between studio and exhibition space is delineated in a process that multiplies the individual moment of the studio and displaces it into a collective dimension. In this sense, every work made in one’s individual and intimate studio is a prospective projection towards the exhibition spaces.

The artist’s studio is a place of perennial reflection on the state of art, a place to elaborate and transform what happens in the exhibition space, which, for its part, wants to fix a particular state of art by showing the contents of the artist’s studio. This dynamics is evident at WIELS, which, in a way, affects also the identity of the institution, in which research becomes the common denominator between these two spaces.

Lorenzo Benedetti

Grey Skies and Sunny Dispositions
Group exhibition with Ericka Beckman, Barry Doupé, Olivia Dunbar, Kasia Fudakowski, Samara Golden, Aukje Koks, Mark Leckey, and Erkka Nissinen
Curated by The Ister
Le Moinsun, Paris FR

This exhibition was featured om contemporary art daily. For more images of the exhibition follow this link.

The will-o’-the-wisp is a brief glimmer of light, mostly appearing at night, that communicates a message to those who see it. Every faith and every folklore has its own interpretation of this momentary ghostly glow: To signal a treasure’s hiding place, to call attention to a lost soul, to mislead weary travellers… The will-o’-the-wisp is a subjectively interpreted apparition, yes, but more important to its character is its insistent resistance to darkness, and to night; that is where it finds all of its ardour and splendour.

In 1984, Turquoise Days recorded their hypnotically synth-heavy track, Grey Skies. Symptomatic of the minimal wave current that haunted the early 80’s, Grey Skies is stuffed with analogic melodies and cold, apathetic sounds; grey precedes black. From a sombre soundscape emerges the hopeful voice of Luchie Brambilla, cutting through like a stubborn glimmer, the lament of a sharp and expressive desperation. The life Brambilla’s voice blows into the track ruptures the artificiality of the music; light resists.

Still in England, but far from the music of the 1980s, a person of a cheerful nature is described as having a “sunny disposition”. William Arthur Ward liked to say: ‘’A cloudy day is no match for a sunny disposition,’’ suggesting that in the end (in a very British way), everything is a question of attitude.

Since Prometheus, light that shines from within darkness has contained a particular quality, charged with an autonomous vitality. The sacred fire of Mount Olympus wraps itself in the veil of night to carry new promises.The artworks that compose “Grey skies and sunny dispositions’ appear much like these glimmers and their stories, radiating through darkness. Fireworks.

In respectful remembrance of Alan Fertil

Pure Positive Energy
Solo exhibition
Curated by Laura Stamps
GEM Museum for contemporary art Den Haag NL 2016

Somewhere between a rock and a pudding
Solo exhibition at Galerie Stigter van Doesburg, Amsterdam
2013

For her second solo show at the gallery Aukje Koks worked without adding whites to her palette, which is normally characteristic for most of her practice. She wanted to create less contrast and to give more depth to the canvases, something in which she succeeded. Koks also managed to soften her paintings by constantly removing paint. It seems that Koks wants the viewer to realize that her work is more about the process of creating, about technique, style and the meaning of a work, than about the concrete object she is referring to.

In the precisely composed paintings images of still objects are brought to movement by the use of repetition, depths, layers and shadows. The paintings provoke a feeling of confusion and fascination, almost like a hallucinatory experience, as the objects seem to be adrift, like the paintings still need to find their final composition. You could say that the practice of Aukje Koks also has a social component. The work Solids, an installation with wallets made out of soap stone, could be seen as a metaphor for a certain part of our capitalist society; each individual object of the installation has a soft appearance but in reality they are cold and solidified.

Wolvecampprijs
Trio exhibition with Peggy Franck and Arjan van Helmond
Stichting Heartpool, Hengelo NL 2012

In this exhibition several things are shown that all make sense to me, but once brought together they might form a idiosyncratic story.
I just came from a trip to Ghana, where I joined the exhibition 'Time, Trade and Travel' (see below). I took some souvenirs, like the statue of 'The Thinker', and I felt overwhelmed by a lot of thoughts and emotions. Next to that, I had a marbel fire place in my studio. I made a painting of it and created a living room idea. The shoes and stool I remembered from the house of my grandfather, and i made my own version of it. The image is my grandmother. The icon on the walls is a West-African symbol, it means to give protection to the house. The feathers reminded me of feathers on clothes of 17th century Dutch Golden Age paintings. There is also a little wooden shoe.

Interiors
Duo exhibition with Philomene Pirecki
MOT International Brussels BE, 2012

De Schilder, de Duif en de Dingen

Exhibition with Roger Raveel
Curated by Luk Lambrecht
CC Strombeek BE 2011

Luk Lambrecht invited me to fill up a big wall with paintings, in conversation with the works of Roger Raveel. The artist was there at the opening. It was his last solo ever, I believe. It was a great honor for me to show my work next to his.

Time, Trade & Travel

Group exhibition with Bernard Akoi-Jackson, Dorothy Akpene Amenuke, Serge Clottey, Zachary Formwalt, Iris Kensmil, Navid Nuur, Jeremiah Quarshie, kari-kacha seid’ou, Katarina Zdjelar.
Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam NL 2012
Nubuke Foundation Accra Ghana 2012

The exhibition Time, Trade & Travel took place from 25 August to 21 October 2012 and was organized in collaboration with the Nubuke Foundation, Accra, Ghana.
It was the result of an active exchange of knowledge between artists and curators from SMBA and the Nubuke Foundation, Accra.
The curators from both institutions as well as the participating artists visited each other in their work and cultural environment. The title of this exhibition refers to the complicated aspects of international trade and traffic with their capitalist forces and influence on life and art.
The participating artists in this exhibition set out to discover historical encounters between Africans and Europeans, the subsequent trade and cultual relationships that evolved from these contacts and the extent to which these cultural and economic relationships are still of influence today. The exhibition travelled on to the Nubuke Foundation in Accra, Ghana.

The exhibition was curated by: Jelle Bouwhuis and Kerstin Winking (Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam), Kofi Setordji and Odile Tevie (Nubuke Foundation).
Time, Trade & Travel was made possible in part by contributions from the Mondrian Fund, the Amsterdam Fund for the Arts, HIVOS and SNS REAAL Fund.