Aaron van Erp - Suspension of Disbelief

Aaron van Erp – Suspension of Disbelief Throughout the years Aaron van Erp (Veghel, 1978) has created an impressive body of work. Not only from an artistic point of view but also because it has acquired a unique position in the art world. To highlight this position from different perspectives, this publication includes contributions from a museum director (Ron Dirven, Vincent Van GoghHuis), a gallerist (Jeroen Dijkstra, Livingstone Gallery The Hague-Berlin), a collector (Henk Pijnenburg), an art critic (Kees Verbeek), and a colleague (Henk Visch). In 2006 Aaron van Erp participated in an important exhibition titled Nederland – Duitsland at the GEM Museum of Contemporary Art (now KM 21) in The Hague. This exhibition aimed to visualise ‘the strong revival of neo-romantic, neo-realistic painting’ by linking three Dutch artists with three German artists. Together with Tjebbe Beekman and Rezi van Lankveld, Aaron van Erp’s work was displayed alongside that of Matthias Weischer, David Schnell and Martin Eder, all from – or affiliated with – the Neue Leipziger Schule. That same year legendary museum director Jan Hoet selected Aaron van Erp for the international group exhibition Sieben auf einen Streich at the newly build Marta Herford Museum (designed by architect Frank Gehry). In 2007 Wim van Krimpen, director of the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, invited the then 29-year-old Aaron van Erp for a retrospective solo exhibition. Van Krimpen described Aaron’s style of painting as ‘otherworldly, about an odd world. Fractured memories of impossible situations. Brutal painting, fleetingly applied.’ In the years that followed (2009-2015), Aaron was invited to exhibit in galleries in London, New York, Beijing, Cape Town and Antwerp. In 2017 he reconnected with Livingstone Gallery and took part in their artist-in-residence programme, Livingstone Projects, in Berlin (2018). At that time Aaron primarily worked from Paraguay, where he created an exceptional series of large drawings that were presented in a solo exhibition at Museum Bozar, Brussels, during Art on Paper Brussels 2019. Starting in 2018 Aaron veered off in a new direction by experimenting with unprimed canvases, embracing this aspect as part of the composition. His next step was to abandon the correct proportions of individual elements in the painting to benefit the composition. ‘In my paintings, the heads are often on the small side, but in my drawings they are bigger. I play with that a bit. It’s all about what I feel is plausible, about the suspension of disbelief. Am I prepared to believe it, even if it clashes with reality?’ The first results of this new direction were presented in 2022 at Club Solo Breda in cooperation with guest curator Leen De Backer (Muhka, Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp). During his residency at the Vincent van GoghHuis in Zundert in 2023, Aaron expanded on this concept. The monumental key piece, The Surrender of Cell Block 9, from series he created there has been acquired by Het Noordbrabants Museum, ’s-Hertogenbosch. As an artist, having to constantly innovate to avoid the pitfall of repetition, but also to continue to surprise, cannot be easy, but it seems to be an ability that Aaron has mastered. His view on the world offers us, the viewers, a different perspective, a way to relate to an increasingly harsh society. And every so often, his unexpected titles manage to evoke an involuntary, disarming smile. [Jeroen Dijkstra]