m.simons is delighted to present SYNTAX, a duo exhibition with Tim Mathijsen and Tim Ayres. The exhibition, which marks Ayres’s debut with the gallery and Mathijsen’s third group exhibition will open on April 12 and runs until May 18, 2024.
At the core of this exhibition lies a shared ethos between the two artists. Both engage with ready-made elements in their practice, drawing from the everyday and the collective unconscious. Ayres's text paintings, derived directly from spoken or written language encountered in various contexts, stand in dialogue with Mathijsen's sculptural interventions, which appropriate forms from the public sphere.
The exhibition comprises two sculptures and two canvas works. On the left wall, viewers encounter a monumental diptych by Tim Ayres, executed in 2020. Dominated by deep blues and greens, the canvas features text inscribed by the artist's finger, quoting, on one side, a line from one of Ayres’ poems and on the other, a quote from e.e. cummings. On the left canvas it reads At both ends of a thread that holds us here, on the right, in mirrored handwriting without breaking anything.
On the far right wall the diptych is faced by a much smaller painting. The acrylic on canvas, made in 2024, reads CHA CHA CHA, written in Ayres’ signature typeface. The backdrop is of the same color as the diptych, although there’s no hint of figurative space. The repetition of the three letters is in a clear grey with the words placed above one another in a slightly skewered format.
Intersecting the visual dialogue between Ayres's canvases, Mathijsen's sculptures assert their presence. Constructed from stacked, identical forms molded from reinforced plaster, these structures defy conventional categorization. While they evoke architectural elements, their lack of structural integrit subverts expectations, challenging notions of form and function.
Against the gallery's back wall, Mathijsen's intervention takes on a more overtly confrontational stance. A stack of Bauhaus-style chairs, bound together with metal wire and spray-painted in a faux-chrome finish, supports an oblong shape evoking Carlo Scarpa's design for an industrialist's sarcophagus.
In their individual practices, Ayres and Mathijsen deftly traverse the realm of appropriation with an audacious sense of purpose. Ayres meticulously plucks sentences from the aural landscape of everyday life, weaving them into the fabric of his text paintings. These fragments, culled from conversations, music, literature, or poetry (more and more often Ayres’ own), acquire new meaning and resonance when transposed onto canvas within the gallery's confines.
Conversely, Mathijsen's approach hinges on the reclamation of forms encountered in the public sphere. His sculptures emerge as tangible manifestations of collective consciousness, forged from molds and materials sourced from the urban milieu. By repurposing and reframing these elements within the gallery context, Mathijsen challenges conventional notions of form and function, imbuing his creations with a provocative ambiguity that invites contemplation.
In this act of appropriation, both artists push questions of authorship, authenticity, and originality to the forefront of discourse. Their deliberate subversion of established boundaries engenders a sense of profanity, disrupting traditional hierarchies and inviting viewers to reassess the cultural significance of the mundane and the overlooked.
Tim Ayres (Hastings, 1965) lives and works in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Among institutions and galleries that have shown his work are Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam, Galerie Markus Richter, PM/AM, PS Projectspace and Stigter van Doesburg. Ayres’ work has been included in numerous public collections such as Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, SCHUNCK Heerlen, AKZO Nobel Art Foundation and The New York Public Library.
Tim Mathijsen (1987, The Netherlands) lives and works in Amsterdam, where he studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, and attended De Ateliers in 2015. In 2019 he was a resident at Wiels in Brussels, Belgium, where he presented a solo exhibition in the projectroom in 2022. He is the cofounder of Marwan, a collective artist run project space in Amsterdam in addition to teaching at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie.
