Past Residents Mathijs van Geest
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Mathijs van Geest. Photo by Sergio Urbina
Mathijs van Geest (b. 1985) is a Dutch artist based in Bergen, Norway. Through a documentary and an economical use of sculpture, text and images, Mathijs assembles gestures and spatial affairs into reserved and composed environments resulting in exhibitions, publications, and editions. The subject of his artistic practice focuses on daily pliability, derived by constantly relating to our temporal behaviour through observation, collecting, walking and writing.
Together with Norwegian artist Bjørn Mortensen, Mathijs co-funded Apis Press (2011), a modest publishing project with a focus on handmade artist books and editions for distribution and for archival purposes. Apis Press publishes independent work, as well as collaborations with international artists.
From the HIAP studio at the Cable Factory, I will produce a selection of new works that I gave the joined title “Optical Smoke”. I am interested in the relationship between looking and making, staring out the window, finding things on my walks through town, the anecdotal and editorial. The works are the result of everyday, material encounters and the fiction created by the eye. — Mathijs van Geest