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Climbing up the stairs one will find an inversion of concepts in Lorian Gwynn’s double painting show. In Gwynn’s de relaties exhibition she shows intimate portraits of some participants, bringing the self in relation to the other. Whereas in de ateliers Gwynn speaks on community, relation-making and storytelling through the wondrous and vivacious group portraits of the participants and beyond (Frank series (2025)). When reading the introduction of de relaties text it is revealed that the only other time that there was a group portrait in De Ateliers was a photograph taken by Adelijn van Huis 22 years ago. With Family portrait (2025) Gwynn uses the group portrait to deliver an abstraction of that format. The figures are all posing and staring at the viewer but we cannot really recognise all their faces. However, a feeling that these people are familiar is constantly creeping on us. By browsing through the brochure I start recognising some of the participants in the painting. The title of The forest of memories growing in my mind (2025) is perhaps alluding to Gwynn’s change in process to paint people in the present rather than ‘dealing only with her past.’ There is a search here for a way to be direct. Of conveying memory and detail with as little mark making as possible. To impress and connect are not mutually exclusive.

On the second floor, exactly above Gwynn’s, Levi van Gelder reminds us of this too through a five channel video installation about Ötzi (now Ötza), the 5300 old mummy found in the Ötztal alps in 1990. Van Gelder created a whole world around this character, impersonating her and simulating how Ötza would struggle in contemporary information-overloaded life. Five screens are camouflaged on boulder-like structures surrounding another boulder where you can sit. In the verbose and eloquent impersonation as seen through my glimpses of the video Ötza, Uninterrupted (2025), we see moments from the life of Ötza the excavated mummy, carrying ancient wisdom and all the glamor and pride from queer and drag culture. His comedic and critical work is – similar to Gwynn’s big paintings– a celebration of crudity and the primordial in all of us. Ötza is funny, clever and poignant and the video makes strong points on the state of the contemporary body that constantly needs to compare.

In Van Gelder’s de relaties show we are transported in a narrow construction side-like environment where we get to meet some of Van Gelder’s references and process. Confined in this precarious and dark space we find a sealed but see-through small gap in the wall revealing the artwork Burial of the Primitive Double: Wim Hof doing the Splits (2025). A three meter long structure made out of paper-mache resembles a prehistoric burial tomb. At the end of the narrow passage we are separated by a transparent screen that is protecting the monumentalized (held by a stand) booklet Why I Want To Fingerbang Hegel (2025).

de relaties also brought the opportunity for two of the participants to show a joint endeavor. Next to Van Gelder’s Ötza the duo Oriental Bling (Swan Lee & Ruoru Mou) shows the video installation De Lulu (2025) in a guestroom, specifically tailored to the video. On top of the bed lies a model of De Ateliers. De Lulu is part AirBnb hyperreality and part documentation of them cleaning up the guest lecturers rooms every week. While there is some esotericism present in De Lulu (e.g. De Ateliers lore) there is still space to read the artwork through the subject matter and make our own associations. The space is carefully set up and brings the audience in a strange and almost paranoid state concerning the happenings of that room in relation to the video.

At the end of the ground floor’s left hallway is Greta Eimulyte’s installation where the relation to the other is hijacked by that of the object. A horse saddle on the floor, solvent transfers on the walls, a table with gloves for bird handling. A row of spoons sitting on a tilted table.

Just across the main entrance, next to the staircase, the soundtrack from Lizzy Deacon’s video Heavenly Beauty (2025) echoes through the whole ground floor. Fittingly, eternally sourcing back to its centre where an othering of the self for the public gaze is taking place. In this de ateliers videowork we see Deacon at a seemingly important event in her life (is it a wedding party?) constantly filming through an action camera. Creating distance through intimacy. In Chick Magnet (2025), Deacon’s de relaties show, the self becomes translucent. A small stair path leads us to a hologram of a couple embracing, undressing and caressing each other. Yet, we cannot enter the room, which creates a distant intimacy. Restraining us somewhere between the role of audience, observer, pervert and stalker, Deacon pushes the boundaries of performance through technology and inaccessibility and additionally making possible comments on digital streaming cultures.

One floor above, duplication again becomes a centerpiece in Flora Fritz’s Offspring (2025) paintings. Fritz paints the same image again and again with slight alterations or by choosing to finish at different points in the process. This amplifies the mystery of the obscurity of the image – two legs next to a precipice – which, from what the title suggests, could resemble a birthing position. While the identicality of the name of this yearly event  (OFFSPRING) with the paintings title creates a comment on institutional traditions it also challenges the meaning of mechanical reproduction, and the fixation of our age to the multi distributed image as truth. 

On all floors, Finn Theuws interrogates the functions of objects. We are summoned into a spooky 90s video titled Victory League (2025) In Theuws’ dreamlike reality, Nike shoes have teeth made from rose thorns. In Dynamic Pulse (2025), Theuws connected two big fishing rods to a barbell. A testament to Theuws’ loud minimalism, this de relaties work hooks all the video installations together. Making us question: perhaps the idea we are about to catch is so big that we need a bar to hold onto. Theuws’ satirical work provides us with the funny tools to find hidden worlds within our worlds and imagine the otherwise, beyond the binaries of life-death, use-disuse, human-nature.

Asides duplications that abound, the offsprings of de ateliers and de relaties create refreshing experiences achieving an interesting juxtaposition –for those who are willing to investigate enough of both worlds– between solitary and relational. It’s not that this splicing of exhibitions helps to breach the gap between audience and the artist. There are installations where we feel more related in ‘de ateliers’ than in ‘de relaties.’ Relating at a distance is a recurring motif. Inaccessibility another. However, what this exhibition binary does is bring to the surface the participants’ struggles, worries, and questions on how we relate through an institution, a company and ‘our’ homes while being asked to perform for a future.