Co Westerik

Untitled, 2013

30.5 x 31 cm, framed

Dry Needle

Ed. 100, signed, dated, numbered, one edition for Bonner Kunstverein

The Dutch artist Co Westerik possessed a unique visual vocabulary and a formal language characterised by stylisation. The focus of his depictions are often hands and gestures of holding, still bodies, the figure of the child and an understanding of domesticity that oscillates between the tenderly intimate and the claustrophobic. In his conscious engagement with a deceptively 'small world', the act of painting and drawing became a means of exploring the inner life and underlying strangeness of ordinary things. Westerik described this process as 'an expedition in search of deep-seated territories' - a finely tuned sense of the intersections between reality and surreality that defies his work from easy attribution to any specific stylistic category or time. Co Westerik's (b. 1924, The Hague; d. 2018, Rotterdam, The Netherlands) work has been exhibited in solo shows at Sadie Coles HQ, London (2019) and Museum Boijmans Van Breuningen, Rotterdam, The Netherlands (2019). He has also been included in group exhibitions at Sadie Coles HQ, London (2015); Cobra Museum voor Moderne Kunst, Amsterdam, The Netherlands (2015); and Kunsthal Rotterdam, Rotterdam.