Michael Raedecker - Material Worlds

With his unique working method, combining painting with embroidery, Raedecker reflects on the world and our place in it. He manages to capture a melancholic atmosphere in his works as if he were capturing memories located in spaces and objects. Landscapes, treehouses and suburban houses float in a realm between realism and surrealism, blurring the boundaries of literal representation and abstraction.

Raedecker draws inspiration for his work from collective memory, art history and popular culture. He draws on many sources, including photography, obscure magazines, film stills and the internet. Before a work is created, he works out his ideas in paint and thread into smaller versions, which he calls demos. These Raedecker photographs and manipulates digitally to then translate the resulting image to a large canvas. On this canvas, he again builds up a sculpted surface using paint and thread. This creates an exciting game where the original becomes a copy that then finds a place again in the final 'original': the artwork on display. Raedecker: "Looking back, the revolutionary developments of the past 30 years have naturally seeped into my work. I have questioned not only life, but also myself, society and painting. Perhaps not so much 'what' to paint, but more 'how'."

Michael Raedecker: material worlds showcases about 50 artworks created by the artist since 1991, drawn from the Art Museum's collection and from institutions and private collectors in the Netherlands and the UK. One new work will also be presented: inert pursuit. Raedecker: "All the paintings in this exhibition are about the presence, but visual absence of us in relation to our surroundings; inside and outside. The landscape, the suburban environment where nature meets man-made dwellings. The paintings show where we live, the exterior of the interior and also the variety of things we collect to make our living environment personal and homely. I observe, translate and make people think about the question of 'where' we exist."

His early paintings were mostly autobiographical, but over time Raedecker's paintings took on a more surreal and theatrical quality. Later, reality crept back into his work, often by depicting everyday and domestic aspects of life. Most recent works show suburbs, on the edge of nature. These places fascinate Raedecker. "Human superiority, intelligence and arrogance have found an impressive way to inhabit and conquer the earth - to create humanity and achieve a quality of life. However, existentially, we are still trying to get used to being here, when we don't always know if we belong here. Not always able to express what we really want, or express what we really mean."

Michael Raedecker's work enjoys international acclaim and has been shown in various institutions worldwide. The Art Museum also has several of his works in its collection. Raedecker trained in fashion at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy and continued his studies at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten and Goldsmith's College in London, where he has lived and worked ever since. He received the Royal Prize for Painting (1993), the basic Prix de Rome Prize (1994) and the prestigious British John Moore Painting Prize (1999). He was also shortlisted for the Turner Prize in 1999. The exhibition Michael Raedecker - in line was at KM21 (then GEM) in 2009 as part of a series of exhibitions on contemporary painters of international stature, including Daniel Richter and Matthias Weischer.