During the summer period we will keep the doors of our gallery open. Looking at art in a stress-free season tends to make the art better.

The Summer Exhibition is inspired by the annual Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, now in its 250th year, which allows each member to submit a work without going through a balloting process. We do make a selection, but give the invited artists complete freedom in the way they arrange their work.

For this edition – which focusses on works on paper – we have invited Rob Birza, Piet Dieleman, and Jan Van Den Dobbelsteen, artists for whom working on paper is an everyday studio practice, and who see paper as an autonomous means of visual expression. All three do not shy away from this straightforward, uncompromising medium. On the contrary, they actually engage with its properties because it offers new opportunities and possibilities.

To Rob Birza (1962), working on paper means more than to the other two participants: it is a free space in which he can indulge in experimentation and challenge or sometimes even overstep boundaries. Birza produces large amounts of drawings in short bursts, drawings which are linked to his painted and three-dimensional works. Paper dictates the freedom and speed of his working method and gives viewers an opportunity to catch a glimpse of what goes on in the creative brain of the artist. Birza is a draughtsman pur sang.

The range of materials used by Jan Van Den Dobbelsteen (1954) is unrivalled, nothing is ruled out in advance. Everything in his artistic output points to the existence of a non-hierarchical system based on transparency and coherence. Paper is a medium that Van Den Dobbelsteen uses on a regular basis and that takes on highly diverse aspects in his rich oeuvre. In his fundamental research, which focusses on both the material and the metaphysical, a clear form on paper often suffices, but the next sheet of paper could just as well turn out as an equivocal collage of movement and materials.

Piet Dieleman (1956) is a newcomer in our gallery. His work fits in perfectly with the existing program, which is why we have invited him to put together a solo presentation next year. The present preview consists of works on paper, which he sees as autonomous investigations within his oeuvre. He certainly does not shy away from using large formats. Dieleman’s working method is of a fundamental nature. His work takes shape within the bounds of a number of formal constraints. He starts out with three primary and three secondary colors in combination with a few basic forms. This may seem strict, but Dieleman takes enough liberties to ensure that each change or shift opens up a new world.