Roos Theuws

Roos Theuws (Valkenswaard, 1957) is a Dutch media and video artist.

Life Roos Theuws studied from 1974 to 1979 in Tilburg to become a Tehatex teacher (also known as "Tekenen, Handvaardigheid en Textiele werkvormen"). From 1981 to 1983 she went to the Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht. With the Stichting Time Based Arts, founded in 1983, she aimed to make the form of video art to be recognized by museums and galleries at the same level as other art mediums. Roos Theuws was closely related to the Association of Video Artists who helped shape the creation of Montevideo / Time Based Arts in 1986. It became the national centre for media art in the Netherlands and supported the creation of video art in a period when the Dutch video art movement was still struggling with the challenges of acknowledging video art as an art form.

Reception within the Netherlands (notable group exhibitions) alt=Photo of a sculpture, which can be described as a big basket made from Gabion which is filled with basalt.

Negen (Nine) Witte de With organized the group exhibition Negen (Nine) in 1991 to present the qualities of contemporary art in the Netherlands at the time. Chris Dercon and Gosse Oosterhof who curated the exhibition, stated that there was little in Dutch art to get excited about. The artworks in the show were exceptions and transcended “such vague notions as regionalism and nationalism.” After its debut in Rotterdam the exhibition travelled to three other venues in Europe: the Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Luigi Pecci in Prato, the Kunstverein in Düsseldorf and the Provinciaal Museum in Hasselt.

According to Lynne Cooke most participating artists were involved in continuing a longstanding tradition centering in on seventeenth-century Dutch art. The art historian referenced The Art of Describing: Dutch Art in the Seventeenth Century by Svetlana Alpers. Among other artworks Forma Lucis III (1986), Forma Lucis IX (1989) and Untitled (So That I Can Build For Him A House no. 4) (1990) by Roos Theuws were part of the exhibition. Lynne Cooke claimed the visual inspection, empirical curiosity and the objective scrutiny of the eye explored in the artworks were “directed to ends that bypass symbol and allegory, leaving apprehension in the realm of sensation, of the seen.” Curator Jan van Adrichem claimed that the installations by Roos Theuws expressed the artist's interest in the visual properties of light.

IMAGO, fin de siècle in Dutch art Forma Lucis VI (1989) by Roos Theuws was part of the exhibition IMAGO. It was a traveling exhibition, financed by the Rijksdienst Beeldende Kunst (The Netherlands Office for Fine Arts), about contemporary art and technology. For the exhibition, René Coelho brought together the work of 14 Dutch artists who all believed that the creative potential of contemporary technology should be explored. At the end of the twentieth century artists wanted to show that the "efficient, dominating and massifying products of electronics" could be used for more beautiful and imaginative purposes. These artworks were shown in venues in Switzerland, Japan, Slovakia, Hungary, Portugal, Spain and Taiwan.

The catalogue of the exhibition contains a dialogue between sociologist and media researcher Volker Grassmuck and economist and philosopher Asada Akira. The latter argues that contemporary media art consisted of a critical analysis of the system of representation. According to Asada Akirta the relationship between contemporary art and technology was similar to the relationship in the seventeenth century between the artworks by Vermeer and the research by Christiaan Huyghens and Van Leeuwenhoek who laid the foundation for optics.

Collaborations Roos Theuws worked with Kasia Glowicka, who composed music for the artwork CONVOLUTION KERNEL II (2008). The collaboration also went the other way, with Glowicka's live performance Quasi Rublev (2009) being accompanied by visuals from video artists, including by Roos Theuws. Also was the composition Luminescence (2009) inspired by Roos Theuws' concept of light.

The departement of optics at Universiteit van Amsterdam are credited for their help for in an artwork from 1984. To make the artwork Kitab al Manazir (2014), Roos Theuws worked with the collection from the science museum Museum Boerhaave.

Overview of artworks

Exhibitions

Solo exhibitions +Non-exhaustive list of solo exhibitions: Year Title Venue City 1982 Experiments with smells ‘Greenish’ Stadsschouwburg Maastricht

Gemeentemuseum Arnhem Galerie Van Gelder Amsterdam 1994 Tumbled Over Rim Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen Rotterdam 1989 Galerie STAMPA Basel 1989 Haags Centrum voor Actuele Kunst Den Haag 1991 Sculptures Kunstvereniging Diepenheim Diepenheim 1998 Roos Theuws Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam Amsterdam 2006 Hazard Rate Galerie RAM Rotterdam 2008 Videolounge Rotterdam 2009 Gaudeamus Muziekweek (in cooperation with VocaalLAB Nederland) Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ Amsterdam 2009 Cooperation with Jaqueline de Lucanet (Le merle Noir, Messiaen) Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ Amsterdam 2009 Art Amsterdam RAI Amsterdam 2014 Roos Theuws Slewe Gallery Amsterdam 2017 DUALs Videogenossenschaft Basel Basel 1987 Contour Museum Het Prinsenhof Delft 1987 Forma Lucis III Bonnefantenmuseum Maastricht 1987 Forma Lucis IV Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen Rotterdam 1989 Vision and Revision Danforth Museum Boston 1989 Video-Skulptur: retrospektiv und aktuell 1963-1989 Kölnischer Kunstverein & Dumont Kunsthalle Köln 1989 25 Jahre VideoSkulptur Kongresshalle Berlin 1990 Dutch Interiors Biennale Tokyo Tokyo

KunstRAI Amsterdam Video Art Festival de Locarno Locarno

Hara Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo Dom Kultúry Bratislava Műcsarnok Budapest Palau de la Virreina Barcelona 1992 Edifício da Alfândega Porto 1993 Taipei Fine Arts Museum Taipei 1991 Poliset Padiglione d'Arte Contemporanea Ferrara

Negen Centro per l'Arte Contemporanea Luigi Pecci Prato 10 junge Künstler aus den Niederlanden Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen Düsseldorf 1992 Negen Provinciaal Museum Hasselt 1993 Right of Speech Noordbrabants Museum Den Bosch 1995 Triennale Kleinplastik 1995: Europa - Ostasien. SüdwestLB Forum Stuttgart 1996 De Muze als Motor De Pont Museum Tilburg 1999 Glad IJs Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam 2000 Galerie Gmurzynska Köln 2002 Collectie Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum De Lakenhal Leiden 2002 Beelden in de Nieuwe Kerk Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam 2004 De 80-jaren Bonnefantenmuseum Maastricht 2007

Sala Verónicas and Centro Párraga Murcia

Zuiderzeemuseum Enkhuizen Stenersen Museet Oslo Solstice Arts Centre Navan Belfast Exposed Belfast 2008 Creatures from the Collection and Other Themes Huis Marseille Amsterdam 2008 Inertia W139 Amsterdam 2010 Digital? Analogue! Huis Marseille Amsterdam 2011 Convolution Kernel 2 Galerie Paul Andriesse Amsterdam 2020 Meanwhile...

Binntal (2021), MunkenPolar paper, Glama paper, 84p, Swiss binding, (ZwaanLenoir) 29,5 x 21 cm.

List of Literature Alphen, Ernst van. “Slow Seeing. Grasping the Image and the Way We Process It.” Roos Theuws, 2014.

Alphen, Ernst van. “Traag kijken: beeldontleding door Roos Theuws.” De Witte Raaf, juli-augustus 2014.

Bal, Mieke. "Activating Temporalities: The Political Power of Artistic Time" Open Cultural Studies 2, no. 1 (2018): 84–102. https://doi.org/10.1515/culture-2018-0009

Bal, Mieke. “Roos Theuws.” Art in America, September 25, 2014. ARTnews.com.

Coelho, Nio, Possel, Rodrigo, Velthoven (1990). IMAGO, fin de siècle Dutch contemporary art. Amsterdam: Rijksdienst Beeldende Kunst/Stichting Mediamatic Foundation.

Fuchs, Rudi. “Stille aandacht.” De Groene Amsterdammer, September 14, 2016.

Massiac, Alix de. “40 Jaar Metropolis M – In gesprek met Roos Theuws.” Metropolis M, October 16, 2019. www.metropolism.com