FRIDMAN GALLERY

At EXPO Chicago 2019, Fridman Gallery will present

a solo booth by Surinamese-Dutch artist Remy Jungerman, who is currently representing the Netherlands at the 58th Venice Biennale.

Born in Moengo, Suriname and based in Amsterdam and New York, Jungerman is interested in the intersecting paths traveled by motifs from Africa, the Surinamese Maroon culture, and 20th century Modernism. In his work, elements of De Stijl, Mondrian’s grid and palette, and Rietveld’s architectonic forms merge with elements from the Winti faith of Maroon peoples of Suriname. The geometries that shaped the International Style are placed against the backdrop of traditional West-African textiles from which European modernists heavily borrowed.

As the art and culture critic Gregory Tate wrote in his essay for Jungerman’s Venice Biennale catalog: “We have now thankfully reached a place in global consciousness where artists of multiple cultural heritages, like Jungerman, no longer need to waste time worrying whether the visual practices of their African diasporic birthplaces are as legitimate as the ensconced European modernists they learned about in their art-history courses at university.”

Jungerman's work decenters Western colonial histories in a way that liberates him to pursue new, futuristic narratives in search of a deeper sense of the individual’s place in the universe.

Remy Jungerman (b. 1959, Suriname) lives and works in Amsterdam. He attended the Academy for Higher Arts and Cultural Studies, Paramaribo (Suriname), before moving to Amsterdam where he studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy. His work explores both Afro-diasporic culture and the Western modernist art tradition. Since his first group exhibition in the Amsterdam Stedelijk Museum, Jungerman has participated in several solo and group exhibitions worldwide.

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