Robbert Pauwels

In his work, artist Robbert Pauwels explores themes related to nostalgic reflections on the past and youthful desires. Using an intuitive and material-oriented approach, Pauwels investigates how he is influenced by personal and collective memories and how he then gives shape to them. Starting from these memories, he blends them in his artworks with stereotypes from pop culture, such as cartoons and novels.

In the painting process, he is guided by material, colour and texture. Transparent layers of paint, dripping forms and soft contours create images that possess a fragile yet almost tactile quality.

Architectural forms, classical ornaments and playful references to everyday life are used to evoke a unique, naive romanticism. In doing so, he plays with contrasts: the robust alongside the delicate, the exuberant alongside the melancholic.

This tension between lightness and heaviness, between transience and longing, gives his work a unique emotional duality: a layered combination of playfulness and sadness. In his work, Robbert Pauwels strives for a feeling of “sad cheerfulness”. A recurring motif in his paintings is the teardrop.

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Robbert Pauwels - Mirror Mirror

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A collaboration between Atelier Rijksbouwmeester and Nest in the Palace of Justice

External location
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Note: this exhibition does not take place at Nest, but at the Palace of Justice in The Hague. It is visible in the public stairwell of the building.

Artist
Curator
  • Daphne Verberg

Artist Robbert Pauwels has created a mural for the stairwell of the Palace of Justice. The physical act of walking up and down the stairs, each time seeing a different view, a different wall, offers the opportunity to tell a story that unfolds as you traverse the floors.

The figures you encounter in this visual story depict a range of emotions. At the same time, there is room for interpretation: each character can be seen as both vulnerable and powerful. Pauwels found the inspiration for this theme during an earlier visit to the Palace of Justice, where he saw a crying woman leaving a room. That image stayed with him and formed the starting point for a series of paintings centered on mixed feelings of pain and relief.

The murals are like blown-up watercolors, applied directly to the wall with transparent paint and large brushes. This creates a play between permanence and transience. That tension is noticeable in the work: tears are temporary, and the artwork will also only exist for a short time. The murals will be on display in the Palace of Justice for six months, after which they will be painted over.

Robbert Pauwels is the fourth artist in a series of eight solo presentations in the Palace of Justice. The exhibition is curated by Daphne Verberg and is a collaboration between Atelier Rijksbouwmeester and Nest.