YveYANG Gallery is pleased to present morals as materials, Tim Enthoven’s second solo exhibition with the gallery.
Utilizing morality as a visual framework, Enthoven challenges traditional perspectives by suggesting that the moral is the primary filter through which we interpret visual culture. In morals as materials, he proposes that morality is not simply a concept, but an actual material that his work is made from.
The exhibition features 33 drawings, watercolors, paintings, and books, all of which frame morality through a personal lens. For example, Enthoven suggests that a significant number of these works were born from feelings of “resentment,” thereby questioning unfiltered emotions, confession, and purity as artistic motives. The importance of personal ethics is interwoven with the depiction of family structures, as seen in works portraying his own parents as well as in allusions to a 17th-century Dutch didactic folk print of a dysfunctional family. Additionally, delicate watercolors from Enthoven’s personal sketchbooks map the artist’s struggles with allergies, suggesting generational and somato-psychic causes of character flaws. As such, morals as materials functions at the intersection of the intimately personal and the public realm.
The opening will be followed by a book launch of Enthoven’s new artist’s book: morals as materials, 85 moral shortcomings (in the work of Tim Enthoven). This publication will serve as an interpretive guide for the exhibition, highlighting a total of 85 moral flaws across 26 full-color reproductions of Enthoven’s works.
Tim Enthoven’s work navigates the paradoxes at the core of his drawings, paintings, books, and situations. His friendly and humorous images, on closer inspection, unveil disturbing truths: what initially seems to be printed turns out to be meticulously hand-drawn, and what resembles a drawing may indeed be a painting. His works present a façade that both reveals and conceals, question the roots of morality, and blur the line between care and manipulation, and specificity and neutrality. Enthoven works with various systems that relate to the dynamics between individual and collective: morality, animal ethics, social sciences, and architecture. His works are intuitive responses to these systems’ visual representations, such as psychic evaluation forms, ethical worksheets, dog-breed charts, and architectural diagrams. Enthoven employs a range of techniques, including watercolors, acrylics, digital sketches, printing, and collage.
By challenging and manipulating the familiar–altering scale, function, context, and repetition–Enthoven intentionally generates conflict and uncertainty within spatial, linguistic, and social structures. His works disrupt functionality, thereby exposing the underlying principles that hold these structures in place.
Enthoven received a BA from Design Academy Eindhoven and an MFA from the Sculpture Department at Yale University, New Haven. He participated in numerous international exhibitions including The Lisbon Architecture Triennale, TEFAF New York, The Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, the BY ART MATTERS museum in Hangzhou, China, and Fons Welters Gallery in Amsterdam. Beyond his exhibitions, Enthoven has contributed illustrations to the New York Times and The New Yorker. Currently, he lives and works in Amsterdam and Brasília.
Opening Reception: 01.27.2024, 6-8 PM
