Creative time spent living and working in Suriname is the common thread that connects these three artists. A renewed interest in artists from this country arose with the presentations of Iris Kensmil and Remy Jungerman who represented the Netherlands at the Venice Biennale in 2019.

Moritz Ebinger is a multi-talented artist working in a great variety of media, from his studio in the Netherlands to the rain forests of Suriname and anywhere else in the world where he is invited to participate in artistic events. Apart from sculpture, painting, and work on paper, he is active in the world of film, performance, social activism, and radio broadcasts. We are delighted to show his recent work and present his newest book and film “Moo Lati” (2021), documenting his latest project in Moengo, Suriname. His work is collected internationally, both privately and in museums and he has carried out many commissioned installations and monumental wall paintings.

Seemingly traditional in his choice of materials, Ebinger nevertheless developed a love of gold as medium, on which he wrote a book and made a radio program. This is also evident in works we are exhibiting, from a gold-dipped fragment of an old railway track he found as a child in Switzerland’s last gold mine, to a canvas, “Home”, coated in gold. As a prolific painter and draughtsman with his own original iconography and style, Ebinger incorporates lines, symbols, figures, and animals.

Ton Zwerver lives and works in Amsterdam and graduated from the Gerrit Rietveld Academie and Rijksacademie. He is known for his sculptural interventions, short performances, installations, films, photography, and beautifully-made art books. Time is a recurring factor in his artistic practice, which is based on an ongoing process through which existing works are continuously transformed to take on new meaning. In his series of “Everyday Sculptures”, for instance, Zwerver documents ephemeral moments or encounters. These sculptures only exist for a short while, before they are photographed and once again modified. In his most recent project, the artist investigates the notions of meaning, time and place by rearranging and recontextualising existing images.

Zwerver also exhibits, lectures, and conducts workshops internationally—most recently at the Moengo Festival in Suriname in 2018. We are showing his recent sculptures which make for strange and compelling viewing.

Els Tjong Joe Wai having completed her art education in the Netherlands in 2001, then spending nearly a decade working and exhibiting in Greece, returned in 2009 to her home in Paramaribo to work and open an art gallery. There she based her work on her old notebooks and agenda doodles, working with the circles, lines, stripes and scratchings, using ink on paper. This searching and rediscovery led to her questioning why a certain figure she drew took on a particular form, leading to her unique technique she calls “One-liners”. These are composed of a single line with a visible beginning and end, several of which are on display in our exhibition. Her book (Untitled) is available for purchase.

This exhibition is concurrent with one at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam on artists of the Surinamese School. Also, on 11 July, Moritz Ebinger will give a talk on his work period in Moengo, at the Kunst Kan Gallery in Amsterdam as part of their presentation of the Surinamese artist Marcel Pinas.