Issuu

work | exhibitions 2025 - 2026

hansovervliet.com

Make something. Find a use for it. AND / OR Invent a function. Find an object. One thing working one way Another thing working another way. One thing working different ways at different times. Take an object. Do something to it. Do something else to it. " " " " " "

Photo cover: Westkappelse Sea dike on a Dutch day

Jasper Johns | 1965 in Catalogue Raisonné of Drawing

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better. Samuel Beckett | 1983 | Worstward Ho

works | exhibitions 2025

Verbeke Foundation in Belgium presented an oeuvre exhibition of my work during the winter exhibition 2024 – 2025. Click here for a video of the exhibition; Click here for a Dutch spoken tv-item by Ilja Tuning; Click here for a Dutch article on the expo, also by Ilja Tuning.

Geert Verbeke and Marie Verboven of the Verbeke Foundation

Volos Art Association | Free Palestine To be presented in the Chrysoula Zogia Museum and Art Gallery Volos - Greece DISTANT SUFFERING XXXXIX | i.d. of a body map for snipers

print 12 x 21 cm on 350 grs Plano

Grote Kerk | Driebergen For Friends of the Tent Of Bethlehem February 8 – March 8 Three kites made out of newspapers with articles on the genocide in Gaza and war crimes in the West Bank. Tail made of 106 names of murdered journalists in Gaza, the Westbank, Israel and Lebanon Size | 270 x 170 cm. Poem from loudspeaker: English / Arabic / Dutch / German If I must die | Refaat Al-Areer (1979 – 2023) Voices | Rezan Habash, Dani Ploeger and Hans Overvliet Recording | Sjef Hermans Edit | Jochem Weststrate

Thanks to / photo Chris Kors (also production for ‘Driebergen’)

Kunstverein Ebersberg 02 - 31 May 2025 Final format poster: 3560 x 2520 mm

Migrations Mail Art Exhibition Lancaster University / Lancaster Institute for the Contemporary ArtsGreat Britain Sait Toprac&Gerry Davies, curators

May 15 – March 27, 2025

DISTANT SUFFERING XXII

i.d. of inequality

contribution Sait Toprac to DISTANT SUFFERING XXII LancasterGBR | Lancaster Institute for the Contemporary Arts / Lancaster University | 20/06/’25

Movies That Matter Foyer of The National Theater (Theater aan het Spui) | The Hague

March 21 – March 29

DISTANT SUFFERING III | i.d. of a recovery

Stone and Glass / IT'S IN IT July 8 - August 21, 2025 Maria Magdalenachurch | Goes

The New Museum of Networked Art July – December 2025 | world wide

through w.’s eye film cooperation with Jochem Verstrate

special cut

The New Museum of Networked Art July - December 2025 | world wide DISTANT SUFFERING XXXX | i.d. of an artist's video portrait utterly endlessly repurposed naive incantation gesture

film in cooperation with Jochem Verstrate

special cut

A project by Bo de Jong & Bert Dorrestijn May 3, 2025 | KipVis / Sloeweg – Flushing nine yellow cleaning wipes | nine languages | one question

DISTANT SUFFERING XXXXVI | i.d. of the shared tale of a bullet

( difference and repetition ) Toonbeeld | Verbeeldingsroute / Imagination Pathway 2025 July 5 – September 14, 2025 Museum ‘ING-gang’ | Stadhuisplein / Terneuzen 1,200 plaster porcelain bullets in a 160 x 120 cm frame, accompanied by the video DISTANT SUFFERING | the tale of the bullet (i.d. of an artist’s portrait) ...

DISTANT SUFFERING XXXX

i.d. of an artist’s portrait special cut of the video selected in ‘Zeeuws Licht‘ in the the category ‘experimental’ Film by the Sea, Vlissingen September 12 through September 21 As is tradition, all selected films were also screened during Zeeland Film Day on 20 September, the last Saturday of the festival. 2025. Photo’s next pages: Sylvia Hubrouck and Bo de Jong Link to the (Dutch) festival version.

DISTANT SUFFERING XXI | i.d. of a shared ice bullet

opening performance OPEN NIGHTS festival | Larissa | Greece October 9 – October 19, 2025

art works in progress 2024–2025

Giel Louws | Performance | 15 x 21 cm acryl op doek | 2025

DISTANT SUFFERING | the tale of the bullet (i.d. of an artist’s portrait) stills from the video

DISTANT SUFFERING XXXXV | i.d. of a shared gold-plated bullet

print of a sugar beet for a project in Argentina MINIPRINT INTERNACIONAL PLANTAS NATIVAS

about industrial destruction of agricultural land 20 x 20 cm, 350 grs plano

DISTANT SUFFERING LI

i.d. of the persistence of the clinique Colmar | Deir al-Balah

the catalogue

DISTANT SUFFERING LIV

i.d. of a vanishing object Leiden 1959 | West Bank 2025

DISTANT SUFFERING LVI | i.d. of shared betrayal Work cotton pouches with bullet holes caused by air pistol Webly Tempest 4,5 mm, nr. 221796, Webly&Scott LTD, Shagai Parboil rice, mixed with Riz noir interdit, Maison Sabarot, video, courtesy by ©Myuz Ahmed, July 27, 2025, Gaza Strip, edited to black and white with scratch filter, 24” TV- Samsung LF22T450FQUX | Speedlink BRIO - Stereo Soundbar, brown paper bag from bakehouse ’t Zand, Middelburg, Monzana Storage Rack Bookcase, 5 Shelves, 135,5 x 58 x 27 cm, July 27 – August 29, 2025. Support Myoz You can support Myuz Ahmed in his work to heal traumatised children in his Children's Psychological Support Center: http://paypal.me/myuzgaza123 | https://gofund.me/6c7692e9 Next pages work in the studio / stills from the video Click here for the catalogue

Grandfather Visser For over a year now, I receive videos from my Gazan friend and colleague Myuz Ahmed. Myuz is helping traumatised children in the Gaza Strip. In his daily videos he, without further ado, shows what remains of his world by simply walking in his utterly destroyed habitat. One on one. Myuz’ images pile up in my head with all the other horrors of that day. Of course it does not leave me unmoved, but it does not overwhelm me either. Until 26 July. A reel of just under seven seconds. I see a bearded man crouching down, scraping something out of the sand and putting that something in a brown paper bag.

For a moment, I manage to convince myself that I am not seeing what I’m seeing. That this is not a man trying to extract the last remnants of some spilled rice from the sand for his starving family somewhere in a tent. After a few seconds, my defences collapse and I realise what I am seeing. Suddenly, my grandfather's history becomes a full-colour reality. I see him returning tired and emaciated from a trip in winter 1944 from Leiden beyond Haarlem. To the polders where his family originated from. He has hung two panniers on his bicycle – indeed with wooden tyres – containing some potatoes and vegetables to feed his family.

As he returns at the Morspoort, he is stopped by four German soldiers and forced to throw his hard-earned belongings into the canal - the Morssingel. I would like to point out that my grandfather did not tell this story to vent his hatred for the Nazis: he always added that “we” would never resort to such practices. As a child, he made me promise that solemnly; I will never forget the look in his eyes when he said that. Watching the man in the video endlessly, I hear Grandfathers Vissers’ voice, I feel his anger, his powerlessness, the sadness, the humiliation, the defeat. The sadness about the man in the video is now hitting me hard and will completely paralyse me for a few days.

completely paralyse me for a few days. Because I had solemnly promised my Grandpa that we would never let it come to this again. That we had drawn up international laws. Indeed in accordance with the Magna Carta Libertatum from 1215 we established the U.N., installed the I.C.C. (in The Hague of all places!) as the successor to the Nuremberg Trials, we set up the Geneva Conventions (Article 47!), etc., etc. Never again exclamation mark. And yet: the man in the video was forced to perform the same humiliating and life-threatening act my grandfather Visser was forced to do in the extreme cold winter of 1944. We have betrayed ourselves greatly . . .

DISTANT SUFFERING LVII | i.d. of Herschel’s bullet cyanotype on damask and handmade paper 350 gsm multiple / edition 25 + 25 + 5 A.P. | 2025 - 2026 in co creation with Bo de Jong All proceeds from this multiple will go to the HOPE Foundation, which works with professional artists to help traumatized children in the Gaza Strip.

experimenting in the studio

the videos DISTANT SUFFERING XXI | i.d. of a shared bullet DISTANT SUFFERING XXXX | i.d. of an artist's video portrait were shown in the program of

The New Museum of Networked Art

DISTANT SUFFERING LVIII

i.d. of the face German version | revisited (2025)

i.d. des Angesichts The beauty of the other's uniqueness must be accompanied by the realization that the other is completely and even frighteningly different from me. Emmanuel Lévinas (1906 – 1995)

The work Videos with photos of 186 media representatives who were assasinated by the Israeli army between October 7, 2023, and September 14, 2025; Video with 186 postcards of places I visited in Europe while commemorating these colleagues; 186 Postcards on 300 gm; Prints by de Witte Print&Design, ’s Gravenpolder; Handi Stitch Classic pinking shears | 4 teeth - 2 mm high / 18 mm wide; Glass plate 65 x 35 cm x 8 mm; Glass plate support 8 mm | glastotaal.nl | PT027537001; Photobook, 32 x 15 cm, made by bookbinding workshop De Boeckenherrebergh | Ruth Bonnewel; Monitors | each controlled by a Mini HD Media Player - afinjo.nl; Paper bin | rectangular | black metal | 17 l | Able & Borret. The German version was conceived for an exhibition at plan-d in Düsseldorf, April-May 2025. Click here for the catalogue in the process of becoming. Click here for the catalogue of an earlier version, included in the collection of the Verbeke Foundation.

statement

Martha Jager, curator Vleeshal in MiddelburgNL about the oeuvre (2023) after a studio visit: The dedication to art as a relational verb is central to Overvliet's work. On the one hand, the balance between poetry and criticism is special, in that the work never becomes bitter or pedantic, while at the same time the dialogue with the viewer is actively maintained. It is a tender form of activism that moves and urges action and also continuously questions the role of art.

Since 2013, by means of the ongoing art-series distant suffering, the Dutch artist Hans Overvliet (Leiden, 1952) investigates the role of the media in their representation of (military) violence. This, in the context of themes as perception, memory and identity formation. Overvliet uses a various range of media, symbols and codes, bringing together dichotomies like beauty and violence, refinement and brutality, the sublime and the vulgar. Aspects of power, politics, exclusion, censorship and the connection between artist, artwork and viewer infiltrate his multifaceted conceptual oeuvre. As a reporter, Overvliet was an eyewitness to the events in the Middle East during the 1980s. Of course these experiences resonate in distant suffering. Elements of distant suffering were exhibited in the Netherlands, Belgium, Pakistan, England, France, Italy, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Albania, Germany, Lebanon, the U.S.A., Brasil, Argentina and Sweden. In 2023, his whole body of paper collages ( 1999 – 2012 ) joined Geert Verbeke’s renowned collection of collages and assemblages. In 2024 - 2025 the whole oeuvre of distant suffering was exhibited in the museum part of the Verbeke Foundation. All works will then be included in the permanent collection. Next to his art-work Hans is, together with his wife Willy van Houtum, the founder and every day guardian of ruimteCAESUUR, the 30-year old space for contemporary art in Middelburg in the province of Zeeland.

acknowledgement

Thanks - people Willy, Giel, Geert , Marie , Jorieke, Jochem, Belgium Germany Ko, Johan, Tineke , Jürgen , Dani, Bo, Sylvia, Erjee, Ilja, leon, Hans, Chris, Onno, Jan, Sarah-Jane, RitaGaza, Simon, SilvioItalia, Sonja, Tonnie, Adriaan, Daniël, Edwin, WilfriedGermany, Sam, Ben, Neeltje, Sam, Guus, RezanSyria, Sjef, MarwanGaza, MohamedGaza, RaedGaza, YasserGaza, MaisaraGaza, SohailGaza, Godelieve, Leni, WissemTunesia, Marianne, Erica, Ruud, Marten, Loek, EbeedGaza, Dirk&UliGermany, Lucia, AdolfinaIItalia, Chris, Gerrit, Fé, MohamedGaza, Roos, Anne-Lyke, Floor, Pier, Anke, Thomas, OlegUkraine, OlenaUkraine, Willy, Marlize, Arjelien, Kisito, RoulaGreece, Ruth, GerryGreat Britain, TopracGreat Britain, Jan, IssamYemen, Belgium

Belgium

Thanks - instututes kunstwerkplaats Kipvis, Verbeke FoundationBelgium, ruimteCAESUUr, uitgeverij De Bovenkamer, no-intituteGermany, Omroep Zeeland, Wij Zijn De Stad, Lacuna StudiosSpain, Roofprintpers, Toonbeeld, Kunsthaus HamburgGermany, Movies That Matter, Mohamed Hart-ArtGaza, Matera International PhotographyItaly, Volos Art AssociationGreece, Sisyphos-Gesellschaft Germany, Friends Tent of Nations Nederland, Stichting Het Rode Ei Goes, Lancaster UniversityGreat Britain, Film by the Sea Vlissingen, The New Museum of Networked ArtGermany , Open Nights FestivalGreece, Lancaster Institute for the Contemporary ArtsGreat Britain

hans overvliet studio-address | Dreesstraat 2 Vlissingen home-address | Lange Noordstraat 67, NL-4331 CC Middelburg www.hansovervliet.com | curiositas@zeelandnet.nl team member of www.caesuur.nu www.ikbeneengod.one click here for my condensed portfolio click here for my extended portfolio click here for my C.V.

An object that tells of loss, destruction, disappearance of objects. Does not speak of itself. Tells of others. Will it include them? Deluge. Jasper Johns Sketchbook | 1964

work | exhibitions 2025 - 2026 www.hansovervliet.com curiositas@zeelandnet.nl