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Galerie Fontana would like to welcome you to the opening of the solo exhibition 'Hogevaart en de bekoring van het kleine' featuring new paintings by Thijs Segers.
 

Central themes in the paintings of Thijs Segers are the beauty and mystery of decay and transience, in combination with the search for something everlasting, the search for a home. Thijs Segers: 'My work is an intimate embrace with transience. I envelop subjects close to myself like my dog Butske or abandoned scenes in and around my home in a wistful cloak, without suffocating them with my fear for the world. Drawing mostly on nature, I try to look for a way to accept decay. The paintings exist just before the lightest light and the darkest dark, at the in-between-place of earth and the world of thought.'

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'The apparent randomness in the paintings of Thijs Segers is reminiscent of sedimentation in a river. Small stones or sand are constantly on the move, until the flow of the river subsides and they settle on the bottom, where they become part of the local landscape. 
 
Many key elements in Segers' work have also once rolled into his life in a similar way. For instance, he inherited the pigments he paints with from a painter whose house he lived in after his passing. Wanting to find a way to use those pigments, he started making his own tempera paint, the medium Segers now works with almost exclusively. He started making tempera during a residency at the former studio of the late Leon Adriaans, an artist with whom Segers has maintained a one-sided friendship since his stay.
 
This miniscule distance between Thijs Segers' living environment, the subjects in the paintings and the way they are painted, are the focal point of his art. The paintings are the thin skin that forms when milk is boiled, a tiny membrane that must exist because the difference in heat is too great. The egg tempera also behaves in a similar way, many thin transparent layers of paint create over- and underexposed scenes in which rooms, (domestic) animals and the landscape around him are given eternal life. 
 
The speed at which the outside world seeps into the paintings is considered with great care; it often takes Segers quite a while to paint any part of his life. Only when he is afraid of losing something does he reach for his brushes.'
 

Tobias Thaens

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ABOUT THE ARTIST
Thijs Segers (NL 1996) graduated in Fine Art (BA) painting from AKI ArtEZ academy for art & design, Enschede (2020). His work has been exhibited throughout the Netherlands, including at the Noordbrabants Museum, the Vincent van Goghhuis and Museum Villa Mondriaan. In 2020 he received the HeArtfund-stipend and in 2025 he is financially supported by the Mondriaan Fund. In 2021, 2024 and 2025 he was nominated for the Royal award for modern Painting.
 
CATALOGUE
A small catalogue containing the paintings from the exhibition and written contributions by Kars Persoon and Tobias Thaens will be presented at the opening and will be available at the gallery during the course of the exhibition.

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Thursday 22 May  - Saturday 5 July 2025​​
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For an overview of the available works click HERE

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