Streetlife exhibition at the Kunstenlab

DEVENTER – Sytze Woudsma exhibited earlier this year at the Kunsthal on the Stationsplein in Deventer. Today, he completely appropriates the exhibition space of the Kunstenlab. Together with his paintings, his mural forms an installation that fills the space.

The ‘Street life’ exhibition was inaugurated on Saturday 20 May. Sytze Woudsma makes oil paintings in which he depicts homeless people. It started as colorful portraits of the people he met on the streets. Today, he prefers to paint the quiet places where they live. The more you look at his paintings, the more there is to discover.

As a viewer, you quickly think about themes like power and the different realities we can live in. Nevertheless, the artist emphasizes that his works are not meant to be moralizing. For him, it is much more about finding a visual language in which composition, color and the represented come together and continue to fascinate. About the way your gaze moves through the painting and continues to search for surprises. You can also take a curious look down the street afterwards. After all, the world at our feet is much more colorful than what we can see at a glance.

Sytze Woudsma graduated from AKI ArtEZ University of the Arts in Enschede in 2021 and has since had a start-up studio at Kunstenlab. In exchange during his studies in New Zealand, he is confronted with the life of the homeless. It inspired him to want to capture this world. For this he photographed, among other things, people on the streets in Germany. These images form the basis of the paintings he made in the past period.