Toon Berghahn: Twilight Spaces
06.03 - 13.04
Recognizable and familiar are the spaces that Toon Berghahn (1970) depicts; a studio, a museum hall, a swimming pool or a sports hall.
However, at the same time they look alienating and disturbing. Sometimes he places a house or modernist villa in a landscape environment enframed by a shimmering, disorienting (twilight) sky, while nature invades a room through a window. This ethereal light, often coming from different light sources, enhances feelings of desolation or melancholy, while offering comfort.
Human presence is only suggested by left traces. Often it is personal memories of a location or space that Berghahn processes in his paintings, places that are anchored in his memories and senses. By stripping them of any direct personal charge, he gives these images a universal meaning.
Berghahn's work is in numerous corporate and private collections. He was awarded or nominated several times, including for the Royal Prize for Painting and has received several grants for proven talent from the Dutch Mondriaan Fund.