Simon Degroot | Manual Handling

30 September - 18 October 2025

Manual Handling

This exhibition challenges the idea that great artworks should remain untouchable. Instead of treating art historical paintings as sacred objects for quiet contemplation, I approach them as surfaces to claim, disrupt, and reimagine.

Art history belongs to everyone. In these works, I use historical hard-edge abstraction as a foundation for contemporary response, challenging the reverence typically demanded by canonical works. Like the traditional pedagogical practice of copying artworks to learn technique, I copy to question and liberate. This process becomes an act of creative rebellion questioning works that are already circulating in the ecology of visual culture in other ways.

With paint-covered hands, I deliberately disturb the clean precision of hard-edge painting. I add messy, interruptive, unapologetically decorative elements that challenge the emphasis on planning and rationalism represented by the original works. My painted marks become active participants in dialogue with these monuments of art history.

By recreating works by major male artists—including Kazimir Malevich, Piet Mondrian, Henri Matisse, Jean Arp, Alexander Calder, Ellsworth Kelly, Josef Albers, and John Coburn—I create opportunities for direct engagement rather than distant worship. This isn’t about homage but about poking canonical works in the eye, handling them with their reverence needed to keep them alive and relevant.

Art history is part of everyday experience and is an ongoing dialogue. By physically engaging with key abstract paintings, I can connect with works that are typically placed beyond reach, collapsing distant objects and bringing them into the contemporary moment through direct contact.

- Simon Degroot 2025