Thomas Raat: 2.II

About

2.II continues Raat's exploration into the influence of Modernism and the movement it creates from avant garde to the conventional and domesticated. A cultural slipstream in which old meets new. Functional objects become formal forms in the exibition; doors become paintings and door handles become their gestural motifs. A wallpaper, produced by the artist, appropriates a work by infamous Dutch artist Hans van Meegeren whose kitsch reproductions of animals at one point hung in almost a third of Dutch households. Through different forms of reproduction, doubling, and inversion, Raat plays in a painterly fashion with the power and significance of cultural transition and change. 

Thomas Raat (born Leiderdorp, 1979) was resident at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam (2011–2012). Prior to this he studied at Koninklijke Academie voor Beeldende Kunsten, Den Haag and Norwich School of Art and Design. Raat was a resident at the Musée de l'Art de la Vie Active (MAVA), Cotonou, Benin (2013); SPACE Studios, London (2008) and the Delfina Studio Programme, London (2005–2006). The first solo museum exhibition by the artist will open in November 2015 at Schunck Museum, Heerlen. Recent solo exhibitions include Sanseveria, Juliette Jongma gallery, Amsterdam(2014); The Experimenter's Dilemma, Galerie Transit, Mechelen (2013); Self and Others, P/////AKT, Amsterdam (2013); An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth, Onomatopee, Eindhoven (2013) and The Armory Show, Boltelang (2013). Recent group exhibitions include Sieg über die Sonne, Galerie Rupert Pfab, Dusseldorf (2014); BolteLang, Zurich (2013); Reconnaissance - Dutch Collector's Eyes & Some of the Places They Look, Testbed, London (2013); Wonders, KUNSTEN Museum of Modern Art, Aalborg (2012) and W139, The research and destroy department of black mountain college, Amsterdam (2012). Raat won the Buning Brongers Prijs (2012) and the Hermine van Bers Prijs (2010) and was shortlisted for the Jerwood Contemporary Painting Prize (2007), he has won the Koninklijke Prize for Painting twice (2003 and 2004). Publications by the artist include An Inquiry Into Meaning and Truth (Onomatopee, 2012), MUMU: Malice And Misunderstanding (SPACE, 2009) and Alteration (Transit Gallery, 2007).